How to Configure and Manage Temporary Internet Files

Whenever you visit a website, Internet Explorer makes a copy of the web page and saves its content as a temporary file on your hard drive. These are all placed a Temporary Internet File folder. The purpose of this process is to enable your PC to load and display web pages that you visit a lot much faster. Whenever you visit a page that has previously been saved as temporary file, Internet Explorer will compare the current content on that page with the saved content on your hard drive. If the web page has changed, it will download and save the updated page. In this way, your PC does not have to repeatedly download web pages that you access very frequently. You may need to configure your temporary files, and even delete them. Read on to learn how to do this.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Configuring

1. Click on your "Start" button. In the Start menu, navigate to "Control Panel." And click to open it. In the Control Panel menu, double-click on "Internet Options."

2. In the "Internet Options" window, click on the "Settings" button. This gives you access to the settings of your Temporary Internet files.

3. You will need to indicate how often you want Internet Explorer to check for and download updated versions of stored web pages. Choose "Every visit to the page" to have the pages checked for updates each time that you access the web page. Choose "Every time you start Internet Explorer" to have it check for updates each time that you open up your web browser. Choose "Automatically" to have Internet Explorer manage the frequency with which it updates web pages. Choose "Never" to ensure that Internet Explorer never updates web pages. If you choose this option, you will need to click "Refresh" every time that you want to update any web page.

4. Set the amount of space to allocate to your Temporary Internet files folder at about 50 megabytes. Generally, you do not really need more than this amount to cache temporary Internet files.

Delete

5. Click on your "Start" button. In the Start menu, click on "Control Panel" and then double-click on "Internet Options."

6. Click on "Delete Files," which is in the "Temporary Internet files" section. Now check the box labeled "Delete all offline content" and then click "OK."

7. Click on "OK" again, which will close the Internet Options window.

Tips & Warnings

• When you delete temporary Internet files, it may take a few minutes for the process to be completed if the folder contains a large amount of web content.