Hi all.

A friend of mine tried to be funny and hid some of my bookmarks in internet explorer. (right click on bookmark -> properties -> hide). The biggest joke of it all is that he doesn't know of a way to get them back.
I guess exporting all of them and then re-importing will work, but that would alphabetize them and I don't want that. I just want them back!
What should I do? (besides kicking my friend in the nuts that is)

Thx!

ps. system is win 2000 with IE 6.0

You should be able to set your operating system (folder options) so that hidden files and folders are displayed with a dimmed icon. I think you choose "Folder options" from the menu of any Explorer window (not Internet explorer, EXPLORER).

Then after that, you can locate the folder on the hard disk where your bookmarks are actually saved (which happens to be different on every fricking operating system, sorry), and select and unhide them.

In explorer this option is set to "always show hidden files and folders" (or something to that effect)
This works fine with explorer, but in internet explorer, the bookmarks stay hidden (and not greyed out like you say).
I've looked for a "bookmarks.htm" file, but that doesn't exist anymore with IE?

The bookmarks are in the "Favorites" folder there is a file for each bookmark. I think the "bookmarks.htm" thing was from netscape.

Correct. Bookmark.htm is Netscape. Internet explorer actually saves a bunch of shortcut files in an actual folder tree.

Where this "favorites" tree is located depends on the operating system and whether or not you've got it configured for multiple users.

For instance, if you're on 95 and it's single-user, then the folder is Windows/Favorites. If you've got multiple users on 95/98 then I think it's Windows/Profiles/Username/Favorites. If you're on Windows 2000, it's c:\Documents And Settings\Username\Somethingsomething I dunno.

So once you've got Explorer showing you hidden files, fish to the favorites folder (wherever it is) and unhide everything.

If you open up the registry, and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders

Ah, nuts to it...

Use the attached executable to open an explorer window on your Favorites folder.

Better yet, try here for a groovier version of the same.

Ah great! I found the greyed out link in c:\documents and settings\user\... and I was able to undo the hiding.

But this has made me wonder : is there a way quickly hide/unhide certain bookmarks you don't want other people to know about?

What bookmark exactly are you talking about ?

Frank

Hi.

I use a folder named Private in my bookmarks and do a quick
attrib +h Private
to hide it and another quick
attrib -h Private
to unhide again. Actually they are both encapsulated in small batch files that change to the appropriate folder first, so that I can do the hide/unhide from anywhere on the shell. Also, I open a new shell window (excuse me: DOS window) for it and close it right after executing the script. That way, there is no visible trace of what I did.
You also need to make sure that there is no open Favorites view, or make sure they all get refreshed (and reflect the change). Otherwise, whoever sits at your desk could easily expand that favorites folder because it is still visible.

Of course, a more secure way would be to move that favorites folder named "Private" out of the main favorites folder so that it doesn't even exist anymore inside the favorites view.

Hope you could follow, and sorry for the late reply (well, sort of).

cu,
sven

Ah. That sounds like a pretty easy way of going about it. I'll give that a try and I'll try making two distinct batchfiles.

Should be doable, even for me!

Thx!