So, my boss from my day job came to me with a “hypothetical” question.
He was wondering how one would clear the browser history of embarrassing information if he was using a Surface tablet.
After making a few jokes at his expense and maybe a few thinly veiled accusations of perversion, I gave him the following instructions. I thought I would share them with you as well. I figure there’s a few folks out there just learning how to use their Surface that might find this helpful.
Clear the Browser History in IE 11 on your Surface tablet (Windows 8.1)
To see how to clear browser history on exiting the browser, see our video instructions on Deleting IE 11 Cache on Exit. If you haven’t upgraded your Surface and are still using Windows 8.0 with Internet Explorer 10, you can use the directions in this PDF to clear your browser history.
- Open Internet Explorer
- Ensure all of the tabs are closed. You can see the tabs by swiping down from the top of the screen. Each tab will have a little “x” in the lower right corner (yes, they changed it) that you can click to close the tab. If you don’t close them all then you run the risk of those tabs reappearing in your browser history
- You will be left with a white screen and address bar
- Next, swipe in from the right to get the Charms Bar
- Tap Settings then Options.
- Scroll down until you see “History”, tap the Select button.
- Check the boxes next to the items you want to clear. If you leave the defaults (the top 3) your history will be deleted along with cookies and cached images but you wont have to re-enter passwords for websites you may have saved.
- Tap Delete.
And that’s it. These procedures not only clear your Internet Explorer browser history in Metro, it will also clear the browser history in the desktop version of IE.
If you’re running a Surface Pro or Surface Pro 2 and are using an alternative browser like Firefox or Chrome, this procedure won’t clear the cache from those browsers but you can find instructions for doing so below:
Hopefully this will clear up any “hypothetical” problems with your browser history 😉
Tim
