Recreate a user's profile, but keep IE history

[guitarzan]

I'm having some oddball issues with a user's profile, and want to delete it and create a new user profile for them. No problem, except that this particular user relies heavily on the URL history in IE8's address bar... that is, they type a few letters, and then select the URL they want from the list that appears below the address bar. Most are not saved as favorites.

My question is, can I bring this history into their new profile? I'm thinking no, other than saving their history in a spreadsheet (I can do this with IEHistroryView) and letting the user select the URL's that are important from this list... but ideally, I wish there was a way to just stuff this history back into wherever the Address Bar pulls this information from.

Can anyone think of other options?

 

[stduc]

The history is stored in the local profile. I have never tried it, but you could try copying it from there before destroying the old profile?

The path should be some variation on

C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Local Settings\History

[navy]When I married "Miss Right" I didn't realise her first name was 'always'. LOL[/navy]

 

[goombawaho]

The user is going about it all wrong. They shouldn't be relying on the drop down history, but should be using favorites. Why?? Because as part of a normal PC tuneup, the temp files/temporary internet files should be cleaned out periodically.

Only favorites are protected from such a cleaning. It's a flawed system. You should switch them over to Firefox as well.

 

[flyboytim]

When I am browsing for stuff I don't always realize that I should have bookmarked a particular page, until later, sometimes weeks later. The great thing I find about browsing history is that it enables me to pinpoint a time in the past when I might have downloaded a file - a PDF for example, with the inspiring filename x2300_AB.pdf - and did not rename it instantly. If I did rename it, what name did I give it, and where did I save it? Which physical machine?
There is also the added difficulty of multibooting and several virtual machines, and various different browsers. Why did I ever drop my Psion 3a?

My best option would be to stick to Firefox and link the cached SQLite files across all my OS versions to a dedicated VM running Access and ODBC SQLite connections, that I can reach from all my possible machines.

 

[guitarzan]

Thanks to all for the input;

stduc: I will give your suggestion a shot, not sure it would work but only one way to find out.

goombawaho: YES I agree 100%, and that was the first thing I told this user. Out of curiosity, would Firefox help this situation? Seems you would still need to create bookmarks to prevent the problem.

 

[goombawaho]

Firefox will auto-complete out of your Bookmarks (Favorites) as you start typing, so I would say that that would help IF things were bookmarked.

No getting around bookmarking though. Just tell the user that you're going to clear the history/cache once every two weeks and that if they don't bookmark it, they lose it.

Carrot and stick.

 

[linney]

811151 - How to Copy User Data to a New User Profile

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=811151