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Bring Order to Your Bookmarks

If you create a lot of bookmarks but don't keep them organized, your bookmarked sites will be almost as difficult to find as unbookmarked pages.

Bookmarks are a lot easier to manage if you place them in folders that branch off the main Bookmarks menu. For instance, I place encyclopedias and other reference sites in a folder called Reference. And I keep dictionaries and thesauri in a folder of the Reference menu I named Language.

To organize your bookmarks, select Bookmarks, Organize Bookmarks to open the Bookmarks Manager. Here you can create new folders, drag bookmarks to new locations, and make other changes.

Find Your New Bookmarks a Good Home

Once your bookmarks are in order, you'll want to keep them organized by placing new bookmarks into appropriate folders.

Whenever you want to bookmark the current page, select Bookmarks, Bookmark This Page, or press Ctrl-D. In the resulting Add Bookmarks dialog box, click the 'Create in' menu's down arrow to see a list of folders into which you've recently placed new bookmarks.

But if you don't see the desired folder there, click the down arrow to the far right of the 'Create in' option. This expands the Add Bookmark dialog box, allowing you to select any folder, or to create a new one.

When you're done, click OK.

Prune Dead Bookmarks

Even if they're well organized, your bookmarks won't save you much time if you have to scroll through ones you're no longer using to find the shortcuts you need.

If a Bookmarks submenu has too many entries, right-click it and select Open All in Tabs. As the name implies, this opens each bookmark listed in the folder in a new tab. If a tab reads '404 Not Found,' the page is history. Click the tab, note the URL in the address bar, and delete the corresponding shortcut from the menu.

If you can't match the URL with a bookmark, you can usually guess the one with the bad link by noticing which others are next to it (the tabs open in the order the bookmarks are listed). Or right-click the bookmark, select Properties, and compare the URL in the bookmark with the one on the tab.