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How do I delete some history but not all without it crashing?

  • 2 replies
  • 20 have this problem
  • 10 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

emailtravelguy
emailtravelguy
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I remember that Firefox used to allow deleting of only some history but not the most recent. For example, I was able to go into Options and under the Privacy tab, I could choose for Firefox to remember the last 7 days, 30 days, etc. Now, it seems that I can only choose "Remember history", "Do not remember history", and the custom option does not allow me to choose how long I want Firefox to remember the history while deleting everything else.

When I press Ctrl-H to open up the history on the side, it shows all the history from a very long time. I remember I used to be able to right-click on a folder (say several months back) and delete it all. Now if I try to do the same thing, it takes a long time and essentially crashed.

I do not know why these features were removed but Firefox is very difficult to use as a result of that now. Could you please help me out with this?

Thanks.

I remember that Firefox used to allow deleting of only some history but not the most recent. For example, I was able to go into Options and under the Privacy tab, I could choose for Firefox to remember the last 7 days, 30 days, etc. Now, it seems that I can only choose "Remember history", "Do not remember history", and the custom option does not allow me to choose how long I want Firefox to remember the history while deleting everything else. When I press Ctrl-H to open up the history on the side, it shows all the history from a very long time. I remember I used to be able to right-click on a folder (say several months back) and delete it all. Now if I try to do the same thing, it takes a long time and essentially crashed. I do not know why these features were removed but Firefox is very difficult to use as a result of that now. Could you please help me out with this? Thanks.

All Replies (2)

Andrew
Andrew
  • Moderator
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We're sorry to hear that Firefox is crashing. In order to assist you better, please follow the steps below to provide us crash ID's to help us learn more about your crash.

  1. Enter about:crashes in the address bar (that's where you enter your website URL) and press Enter. You should now see a list of submitted crash reports.
  2. Copy the 5 most recent crash ID's that you see in the crash report window and paste them into your response here.

Thank you for your help!

More information and further troubleshooting steps can be found in the Troubleshoot Firefox crashes (closing or quitting unexpectedly) article.

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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If you have problem with deleting the history in the Library then you can delete the places.sqlite file in the Firefox profile folder.
Note that this will remove all history (you can copy/paste or drag history items to a bookmarks folder).

Problems with bookmarks and history not working properly can be caused by a corrupted places.sqlite database file.

You can use this button to go to the Firefox profile folder:

Current Firefox versions do not have a time limit for the history. Firefox determines automatically how many pages can be kept without affecting the performance. You can see the current value via the read-only pref places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages on the about:config page. See Marco Bonardo's blog about this: