Form autocomplete

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Firefox can remember what you've entered in forms on web pages, also known as text fields. After you've entered something into a form on a web page (such as a search box), the next time you visit that page, your previous entry will be available to re-use.

Table Of Contents

Using Auto Form Fill

To use your previous entry in a form:

  1. Type the first few letters of the entry into the form field. Firefox will display a drop-down menu with what you've typed into the form before.
    • You may see a list of all the entries stored for a particular form field by pressing the down arrow key when the field is empty.
  2. Press the down arrow key to select the entry you want to re-use. Press EnterReturn when the appropriate entry is highlighted. The text of the entry will appear in the form field. You may also use the mouse to click on the entry.

Deleting individual form entries

If you want to remove one of your previous form entries from Firefox's history:

  1. Click on the form field and press the down arrow key to display all the saved entries. You may type the first few letters of the entry to limit the number of entries displayed.
  2. Use the down arrow key or the mouse pointer to highlight the entry you wish to delete.
  3. Press Shift+Delete. The entry will be removed.

You may repeat the process for any number of entries for a particular form field.

Clearing form history

If you want Firefox to forget all of your previous form entries:

3.5:
  1. At the top of the Firefox windowOn the menu bar, click on the Tools menu, and select Clear Recent History.... A dialog box will appear.
  2. In the dialog box, set Time range to clear: to Everything.
  3. Click on the down arrow beside Details, make sure only Form & Search History is check marked.
  4. Click Clear Now. The dialog box will disappear and your form history will be erased.

3.0:
  1. At the top of the Firefox windowOn the menu bar, click on the Tools menu, and select Clear Private Data.... A dialog box will appear.
  2. In the dialog box, make sure only Saved Form and Search History is check marked.
  3. Click Clear Private Data Now. The dialog box will disappear and your form history will be erased.

Prevent Firefox from storing form entries

If you don't want Firefox to remember what you've entered into form fields, you can turn off the auto form fill feature:

3.5:
  1. At the top of the Firefox windowOn the menu bar, click on the ToolsFirefoxEdit menu, and select Options...Preferences....
  2. Select the Privacy panel.
  3. Set Firefox will: to Use custom settings for history.
  4. Remove the check mark from the box that says Remember search and form history.
  5. Click OK to close the Options windowClick Close to close the Preferences windowClose the Preferences window.

3.0:
  1. At the top of the Firefox windowOn the menu bar, click on the ToolsFirefoxEdit menu, and select Options...Preferences....
  2. Select the Privacy panel.
  3. Remove the check mark from the box that says Remember what I enter in forms and the search bar.
  4. Click OK to close the Options windowClick Close to close the Preferences windowClose the Preferences window.

Disabling form history also prevents Firefox from storing search history for the Search bar in the Navigation Toolbar.




Based on information from Deleting autocomplete entries (mozillaZine KB)


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Page last modified on Thursday 04 of June, 2009 16:23:12 PST.
Contributors to this page: Chris_Ilias , underpass , Tim2 , Alice0775 , AliceWyman , np , djstsys and Bo .
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