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  • How do I Sort and Organize Favorites in Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 8?

How do I Sort and Organize Favorites in Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 8?

November 16, 2013 / Dave Taylor / Windows 10 Help / 24 Comments

There used to be a way to sort Favorites alphabetically in Internet Explorer but that feature has vanished with the latest version of MSIE in Win8. How do i sort my bookmarks?

If you’re running Microsoft Windows 8 or Win8.1, odds are quite good that you are also running Internet Explorer 11, either in “window” mode (the standard interface where it’s a window on the Desktop) or in the full-screen “Metro” mode (where it takes over the entire screen). Either way, turns out that the Favorites management area hasn’t changed a huge amount, you just have to know that Microsoft decided that sorting options wasn’t important enough to warrant an actual button in the edit window.

Yeah, who thought that, I dunno. Maybe in Redmond they have secret third-party tools that help them manage their Favorites. Or perhaps none of them actually surf the Web and bookmark favorite sites, so it’s never an issue?

In any case, I’ll show you how to sort your Favorites in window view but it works in both.

To start, open up Internet Explorer and look on the top right:

windows 8 internet explorer 11 top right

You’ll want to click on the star icon, which gets you to the Favorites menu:

MSIE 11 Favorites

You can see my set of bookmarks, and it’s in random order.

Well, actually, it’s not. It’s in the order that I saved them as favorites, so “Bing” was first, and “Syfy” was last.

To organize and manage your Favorites list, click on “Add to favorites” on the top right (yes, it’s totally counter-intuitive):

add to favorites - internet explorer 11

There’s the option you want. “Organize favorites…”  Choose that.

organize favorites windows 8 web browser

You can see the set of options here. You can click and drag to reorder Favorites, delete them, create sub-folders (which give you sub-menus on Favorites, quite handy).

But where’s that darn Sort button? It doesn’t exist. Instead, right-click on any of your Favorites and look at what’s in the context menu!

sort internet explorer favorites by name

Yup, so the feature’s still available, it’s just hidden in the last place someone is going to look, the context menu for individual Favorites.

Bizarre.

Ah well, now you know where it is. So choose it and in a fraction of a second all your bookmarks are reorganized:

favorites sorted by name

That’s the trick. Click on “Close” and you’re done. Until the next time you want to sort your Favorites!

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Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!
ie 11, internet explorer, internet explorer 11, microsoft windows 8, msie, organize internet explorer favorites, win8

24 comments on “How do I Sort and Organize Favorites in Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 8?”

  1. janice casey says:
    January 30, 2018 at 10:23 am

    This being a question, not a reply; I hope that any reply will help someone else: my Explorere11 Windows 7 Favourites bar has suddenly begun scrolling all of the items at the beginning of the list, beneath those at the end, actually ONLY moving those beginning with X, and leaving those beginning with letters BEFORE X, in their places. I have changed no settings and don’t understand why this began to occur yesterday.

    Reply
  2. Sheikh Abrahim says:
    December 29, 2017 at 6:55 am

    I am using Windows 7 and would like to know how to undo the changes ‘My Favourites’ have undergone since about a week ago. I did not trouble any setting. I just went on my computer and discovered the change. I would like the Bookmarks to be back in the order I have been saving them. With that I can pinpoint quickly some site I might to check. Thanks.

    Reply
  3. Scott says:
    February 9, 2017 at 4:55 pm

    Got a new laptop and copied all my IE11 favorites (literally thousands) from my backup to the new laptop’s Favorites folder. Sure, they’re all there, but they’re sorted by NAME, not by DATE. Since the browser displayed them by order created, it should be easy to get them to display that same way on the new laptop. At least one other person asked this same question in the comments, but you’ve never addressed the issue.

    I don’t know why I think I’ll have better luck with a response that he did, but here’s hoping!

    Reply
  4. Al says:
    January 13, 2017 at 9:35 am

    Great tip. Frustrating they hid that option in such an obscure place!

    I have now named all my favorites starting with a leading digit to control the sort and keep the ones I use most at the top.

    Thanks again!

    Al

    p.s. Wonder if the comments format can be modified so the thumbnail picture doesn’t obscure the date of the post. Just at thought.

    Reply
  5. Kenneth Sayasith says:
    October 31, 2016 at 6:39 am

    Thanks for the how to, works great.

    Reply
  6. markl says:
    October 29, 2016 at 12:33 pm

    How do I sort favorites by the date created. It appears that IE 11 only allows sorting by name.

    Reply
  7. Grant says:
    November 30, 2015 at 3:12 pm

    I have the same problem with IE 11 in W7. It has the separate sort by name in organize favorites. I categorize the buttons – STOCKS, PERSONAL, etc. – and that name goes in the front of the favorite so it will sort properly.

    Thanks for the tip.

    Grant

    Reply
  8. Len says:
    September 14, 2015 at 7:12 pm

    Will the same procedure work on Windows 10? I was surprised to find my folders sorted Z – A as are the sites within each. They used to be in the order I wanted by clicking and dragging. Also, any new folders are now added at the bottom.

    Reply
  9. Dave Taylor says:
    June 4, 2015 at 1:17 pm

    For those of you that are finding that your bookmarks are sorted but then shortly revert to their unsorted state, I am wondering if you have any sort of bookmark synchronization enabled, either through OneDrive or your live.com account? That’s where I’d check…

    Reply
  10. Porcher says:
    June 4, 2015 at 12:23 pm

    It looks like many people have tried these directions (including me) and have had some problems or questions. Dave did a great job of explaining the initial directions. Is Dave going to address any of these comments? It would certainly be nice!!! (HINT)

    Reply
  11. mbrauen says:
    May 21, 2015 at 8:51 am

    Followed the directions and am now sorted by name. However I didn’t really want that type of sort, although it is more useful than my previously “random” order. I want my favorites to sort dynamically based on most visited. I think that would be most helpful for me. Does this make sense? Does anybody know how to achieve this. Or is this possibly a new feature for the MS dev team to get cracking on?

    Reply
  12. Glow says:
    February 17, 2015 at 5:20 pm

    Thanks, Dave. Got Favorites sorted for now. I had deleted all IE 11 Favorites to copy all my current Firefox bookmarks over.

    These steps are so convoluted which is typical of Microsoft. Also my PC did auto Windows Updates which took forever today which slowed my work on the PC. Microsoft is so lame. I still prefer Firefox because at least I can find steps to set it up.

    Reply
  13. Siu says:
    February 9, 2015 at 10:27 am

    Thank you, it worked.

    Reply
  14. Jenny says:
    January 1, 2015 at 2:32 pm

    Every time I move a link a copy is created, and every time I delete something it pops back up again! Any ideas?

    Reply
    • Dave Taylor says:
      June 4, 2015 at 1:16 pm

      If things are popping up again after you delete them, my guess is that you have bookmark synchronization enabled. Try turning it off and see if that fixes the problem.

      Reply
  15. Les says:
    December 30, 2014 at 8:06 pm

    Thanks for the help with sorting…I have changed from Firefox to IE…sick of the problems every time there is an update.
    Happy New Year.

    Reply
  16. Van says:
    October 23, 2014 at 9:53 pm

    This is one more example that it is amazing how so many things are designed by people that can’t see things from the perspective of users.

    Reply
  17. Andy Hill-Smith says:
    June 5, 2014 at 11:17 am

    Thank you very much – worked a treat!!

    Reply
  18. Denny says:
    June 1, 2014 at 2:16 pm

    I don’t remembering updating my Win 8.1/IE11 recently but the Favorites list has resorted to have my folders display on top of the list. I had it set to have the folders at the bottom of the list and the individual sites at the top. Something changed in the last day. Any ideas on how I can sort my list to have the folders appear after the individual sites?

    Reply
  19. Dom says:
    April 14, 2014 at 2:08 am

    I’m having exactly the same problem as Steve Seybold…
    No matter how frequently I sort my favourites list (alphabetically), IE11 quickly and without any prompting sorts it into a random order… oddly, always the same ‘random’ order. This resorting happens as you watch: having sorted alphabetically, you click on Favourites which is initially correctly sorted, then in a matter of moments the list changes.
    IE11 also removes vast amounts of my favourites from within the folders from time to time. I am routinely used to copying and pasting my favourites list from my backup.
    I’m the only person who uses this computer – and I’m an IT Manager, so I ought to have an idea about running my own computer!!
    I have almost given up on IE – Chrome seems less fraught!

    Reply
  20. Steve Seybold says:
    February 4, 2014 at 2:26 pm

    This works, but only temporarily! When I sort by name, it does what it’s supposed to but without prompting reverts back to a random order of folders 🙁

    Reply
  21. Jerry Goodwin says:
    November 25, 2013 at 9:38 am

    This also works in Windows 7.

    Reply
  22. V K Mahajan says:
    November 18, 2013 at 5:15 pm

    Thanks a million. When you get time please tell us where accessories are hidden.

    Reply
    • Dave Taylor says:
      November 18, 2013 at 9:52 pm

      “accessories” as in widgets that appear on the screen? They’re all gone, as far as I know.

      Reply

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