Are your Internet Explorer favorites out of control? Do you have a hard time locating the best of your favorites? Everyone who browses the net has a collection of favorites some that we return to time and time again, some we return to occasionally, some we return to infrequently and others we do not return to again. How do you keep them all organized so you can get back to the important ones without sorting through a myriad of links? I use Internet Explorer’s links bar to put the best of my favorites at my fingertips.

You might say sure, I’ve looked at using the links bar; but, what good is it when I can only put about 10 links on it? I have many more than 10 best of favorites to store. The answer to the limitation is to establish folders on your links bar and store the best of your favorites according to categories.

The categories I set up are:
* Sites –to store links to sites I manage
* Bless – blessing and inspiration sites
* Info – maps, yellow pages, white pages, dictionary, zip code, encyclopedias etc.
* News – various newspapers, news services and periodicals, and weather sites
* Recipes – links to recipe sites
* Search – links to various search engines
* Temp – links to sites I don’t have time for immediately
* Music – links to various site pertaining to festivals, venues, radio, bands, YouTube, etc.
* Entertainment – TV Guide, local movie theaters, games

Many of these folders have sub-category folders to keep them organized. Of course, you set up your categories to match your interests.

To view the links bar
The links bar may be open but “hidden” on the address bar to the right. If it visible there, you can click and hold on the gray vertical bar at the beginning of the links bar; drag the links bar down below the address bar and dock it there. If it is not visible, it may be closed. Right click on the toolbar and select Links from the shortcut menu. Position it as described above.

The links bar may have pre-established sites that may or may not be of interest to you. You can safely delete any link on the bar you would like. To remove links you do not want to keep, right click on the link and select delete from the shortcut menu. Confirm the deletion when prompted.

To set up your category folders
* Select Organize Favorites from the Favorites menu
* Locate and open the Links Favorites
* Click on the Create Folder button
* Type in the name of the category you want to establish
* Continue to add categories as needed.

Tip: Keep the Category folder name simple. The longer the folder name, the less folders you will be able to view on the links bar. Although the links bar will “overflow” with a drop down at the end of the bar, it begins to defeat the purpose of convenience.

An easy way to populate the links bar is to click on the icon in the address bar for the site you want to add and drag it down to the links bar until the folder you want to place it in is highlighted. If you have sub-categories, once the link is in the major category folder, you can click on the links bar folder, locate the link you want to move, click on it and drag it to the sub-category folder and drop it in. You can also sort the links in the folders by opening the folder on the links bar, right click on the dropdown and select Sort by Name.

I think once you set up your links bar and begin to use it, you will find it indispensable.

Foxfire's Mozilla has a similar feature called the Bookmarks Toolbar Folder. It works quite similarly to the Links Bar in Internet Explorer.