Working Offline - sites won't work for me offline

[FTLOSM]

I have a few sites I saved in Internet Explorer 6 with "make available offline" so I could read them later at a jobsite where I had no internet access available.

Before I disconnected and left the house those 4 sites I had marked and saved as make available offline, I did to go tools and hit synchronize, it went thru the list and updated everything, turned laptop off went to the jobsite turned on pc opened browser under file checked work offline, and since I had hit synchronize and also had marked those 4 sites as make available offline, and had put my check next to workoffline, I figured I would be able to click on and view those sites.

However I got nothing but error screens, I have never messed with this feature before but figured what I had done was correct, this is probably very simple stuff I am not doing one step or something but was very frustrated that it didn't work like I was hoping it would.

What can I do to fix this so when I can't access the internet I can view those pages thru my browser in offline mode?

Hope I laid it all out clearly and can find out what I am doing wrong to fix it.

Bill

 

[stduc]

If you have 'delete temporary files on closing IE' ticked (advanced setting) then that will prevent offline pages working.

Personally - I find the 'work offline' too flaky. I use file >save as and save the page to a folder on my hard drive. That doesn't work for some sites and in those cases I copy & Paste to Word and save the Word document. (in IE use ctrl/A to select all then ctrl/C to copy and just paste into Word) - but you have to have a blank word document open and ready. N.B. the paste can sometime be SLLLOOOOOOOO

http://WWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!

You might also want to try your method again, but pull your internet connection & test before leaving home. Don't close IE and hibernate your machine rather than shutting down. If you are on IE7 and have the pages open in different tabs that seems to work. ON IE6 just keep multiple pages open.

I have been known to be wrong.

 

[Diancecht]

I have to disagree with stduc.

I don't think you lose your offline pages when clearing automatically your temporary Internet files. And if you do it manually, you have to explicitily check the option.

And I have some offline web pages that works OK.

So, FTLOSM, what kind of error pages are you getting?

Cheers,
Dian

 

[FTLOSM]

Ok I have bookmarked the sites I want to work while offline, hit synchronize to update them and have the most current content saved, I am doing this on my laptop at home btw, then I turn off the laptop go to the worksite, turn it on (where I don't have internet access) and under file in ie6 i check work offline, then in the links menu where i saved the site as "work offline" i click that link and the browser says

webpage unavailable while offline to view page click connect, well of course I dont have internet access at the time I am trying to view this page that I supposedly saved for offline viewing, so if i click stay offline it doesn't work and if i hit connect it tries to connect to internet and that too of course doesnt work.

So what am i doing wrong, is there any other type of way I can view a complete website while not being able to connect to the internet? There are many reasons I would like this to work, one for showing clients work on sites at their location where internet might not be available, car trips where I can just read up on info on sites when i dont have access to the web but want to read site info, or times when I work at locations where I have time to kill (monitoring a pc of machinery etc) so sometimes I sit for 2-3 hrs with nothing to do, reading some saved websites would be nice to have the ability to do but obviously I am doing something wrong, even if there is some other way to do this (software or something) I would consider getting that if it would help.

Bill

 

[FTLOSM]

stduc thanks for the idea, i did go into my advanced settings options and confirmed that box was not checked, so at least that is one more thing off the list here...

Am I correct in assuming if I save a website in favorites and mark "make available offline" that I should be able to go into that favorites link section later while offline and view the page?

That was my understanding of how all that worked, and I even did the synchronize to have the most updated content saved, yet upon clicking the links when not able to access the net (certain locations with no wifi etc) all I get is that annyoing "webpage not available while offline,to view page please click connect" if i click stay offline or connect I still get nothing for those saved work offline links.

 

[stduc]

I had a little play with a virtual machine running IE6. I marked news.bbc.co.uk as a favourite to be available offline. I synchronised. I dropped the virtual internet connection. Well - it didn't work for me either.

What I could do was open the temporary internet folder and find the pages and open them that way.

Then I trashed my temp internet files via IE and ticked to delete offline files. The folder emptied.

Now with a clean start I tried a few things. To cut a long story short. It seems to work providing you select work offline for that favourite and follow through on the wizard and then.

1. You set IE to work offline before closing down IE.
2. You set IE to work offline immediately on starting IE up again
3. when you select an a favourite that is available offline you still have to accept a message box and stay offline!
4. re-synchronising cased BBC to mess up But it worked with tek-tips.

So it seems to have to re-choose your offline pages every time for some sites. Maybe that is your problem.
It worked better for tektips than the BBC - but on both not all the site was available offline.

As I already mentioned - I gave up on offline pages as being too flaky. It's better to save the pages you want and the feature is not even available in IE7.

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

 

[FTLOSM]

Man that bites I cant get it to work right, figured this was a no brainer work offline, there are no programs that "simulate" or allow me to download (outside ie6), vs just saving as a word doc to read later etc...

 

[stduc]

Ah - now that's a different question.

A quick google using

+save +"web site" +local +"hard drive"

Generated these useful looking hits - the only questions is are you prepared to pay a few bucks. Maybe if you look harder than I did you will find some freeware?

http://www.surfoffline.com/order/

http://shareme.com/details/website-downloader.html

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