Can't clear search toolbar history in Firefox

You will have to restart Firefox to see the change take place, but you will also have to "Clear Search History" as you stated in your original post and then do the Unchecking of Show Suggestions and then restart Firefox.  Boom - nothing there.

If you never want the Search bar to remember any of the searches, you have to open Tools->Options->Privacy - History and Uncheck the "Remember what I enter in forms and the Search bar"

Thanks for your comments.  Unfortunately, I am still having problems with this.

>> Highlight the search term and click Shift + Delete keys.  If you hold down the Shift key, then hit Delete, all the terms gets deleted quickly.

Unfortunately, it would be difficult to delete all search terms like this, since typing different characters will bring a list of different search terms.

>> What you need to do is right click in that Search bar and UnCheck the "Show Suggestions"  option.

This only appears to suppress the showing of the list.  It still doesn't delete the actual search terms.

>> If you never want the Search bar to remember any of the searches, you have to open Tools->Options->Privacy - History and Uncheck the "Remember what I enter in forms and the Search bar"

I have tried this.  It does seem to stop new searches from being remembered, but old searches still remain.

Why doesn't clearing Private Data and/or selecting Clear Search History simply delete all of the terms from the built-in search box?  Could there be a Firefox bug that is causing this?  Any ideas?

I don't understand why selecting Saved Form Information (via Clear Private History) and/or Clear Search History (from the context menu on the toolbar) does not clear the list from the built-in toolbar.

"I don't understand why selecting Saved Form Information (via Clear Private History) and/or Clear Search History (from the context menu on the toolbar) does not clear the list from the built-in toolbar."
Clear Search History  does delete the history, BUT then again you do have an outdated OS.  I wonder if that is why it doesn't do what you are expecting.  This isn't an Added toolbar you are referring to, is it? It is the default Search Bar, correct?
Although according to http://kb.mozillazine.org/Search_Bar using the Shift+ Del allows you to Delete one at a time.  I would just use the Right Click and Clear Search History.

Thanks for your comment.

I use Windows '98 SE, however, Firefox does claim to still support it (please see http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/system-requirements.html), and everything else in Firefox seems to work okay with it.

I am using the built-in default toolbar, to the right of the address bar.  I don't have any third-party Firefox toolbars installed.

I can delete individual entries by selecting them and hitting delete.  But choosing Clear Search History (which is what it really needed to clear all entries), does not seem to be effective.

Makes me wonder if there is a bug somewhere, as clearing the search history should be straightforward otherwise, although I couldn't find any documented bug that could cause this.

Any further ideas?

An addon could be interfering.  Go to Tools > Addons and disable all the addons. Now test.

I disabled an add-on, restarted Firefox and testing again, but unfortunately it made no difference.

BTW, in which file does Firefox locally store the search history for the built-in toolbar (i.e. the search terms that pop up as suggestions)?

>> I disabled an add-on,

Did you disable all addons, or one addon?

The search terms are stored in Formhsitory.dat file in Firefox profile folder.

I had disabled all ad-ons for testing (I only had one ad-on enabled at the time).

I've viewed formhistory.dat in Notepad, but there are no search terms stored in it.  The file is only 233 bytes in size as well.  Yet, if I go to the built-in Google search bar and start typing, I still see suggestions popping up (previous searches that have been done).  So where is Firefox actually storing them locally in this case and why won't they clear?

Richard2000,

Can we try this just one more time?  

Right click in the Firefox Search form, scroll to bottom and make sure that "Show Suggestions" does not have a check.
Right click in the Firefox Search form again, scroll to the "Clear Search History"
Close Firefox.
Open Firefox.
Type anything in to the Search form.


I'm looking into this but can you take a look at this page and confirm your settings for us?  This is how mine is set up.  Yours should not have a Checkmark.

http://img394.imageshack.us/my.php?image=printscreenis7.jpg

Although That didn't work for me either on XP, now that I tried it.

I had to then go up to Tools->Clear Private Data when That window popped up, I chose Cache and Saved Form and Search History then hit Clear Private Data Now and voila it was gone.

I'm thinking it might be time for a Bug report to Mozilla.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/

So it seems that Clear Search History in the Search box itself doesn't work and is misleading.  And it seems currently the KB's and Forums are offline so I can't do better research at this point in time BUT I did do some research on my own system and war1 is correct.

As war1 stated previously, the actual file that holds your Search history is indeed formhistory.dat

If you were to physically delete that file while Firefox is closed, (NEVER work in your Profile folder while Firefox is running) it will be replaced (although empty) when Firefox is opened the next time.

The reason you don't see anything (that resembles your search terms) in it is because it is actually in the Mork structure format. One of the most confusing and illegible format to humans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mork_(file_format)
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Mork_Structure

I tried it again but the problem is persisting.  There doesn't appear to be any way to remove the list of suggestions from the Firefox built-in toolbar that works.  Also, unchecking "Show Suggestions" only appears to suppress the showing of the list.  It still doesn't delete the actual search terms.

I hope you saw my last post above yours.

Yes, I saw your post.  Thanks.

I'm still uncertain about the formhistory.dat file though.  There are many suggestions it has remembered, yet the size of this file is only 233 bytes.

Richard2000,

If you want to fix the problem, you can create a new Firefox profile. Something in your old profile is corrupt, and we have not been able to find it.
http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/profile

I wonder if maybe you have multiple profiles and you just might be looking at a different one?


A blank formhistory.dat will have this in it when opened in Notepad.

// <!-- <mdb:mork:z v="1.4"/> -->
< <(a=c)> // (f=iso-8859-1)
  (80=ns:formhistory:db:row:scope:formhistory:all)
  (81=ns:formhistory:db:table:kind:formhistory)(82=Value)(83=Name)
  (84=ByteOrder)>
<(80=llll)>[1:^80(^84^80)]

That is one of mine that is 231 bytes.

Have you done a complete search of your hard drive for form*.dat ? Do you have multiple?

In Win98 the profile folder should be in one of these two locations.
C:\Windows\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<Profile name>\
C:\Windows\Profiles\<Windows login/user name>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<Profile name>\


In your Profile, do you have  search.sqlite ? We may need to rename it and see if that helps.

I'm looking around at some bugs now.
By any chance, how is your Hard Drive space?
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=359564

How did you upgrade to 2.0.0.2? Did you upgrade over 1.5.0.7?
If the search bar problem still exists, even in a new profile, it could be related to bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=357922 (Firefox 2 installer bug) which causes various problems including search tab and URL bar problems and missing bookmarks.


If deleting your formhistory.dat and restarting Firefox does not help, I think the last thing I would try is closing Firefox, Copy over the Profile Folder to make sure you have a good backup,  Downloading a New Download of the set up Program, closing Firefox, Uninstalling it, restarting system, Install the Newly downloaded copy of Firefox and see if that helps.  You could start out with a brand new Profile if you want.

>> I wonder if maybe you have multiple profiles and you just might be looking at a different one?

I have only one profile.

>> Have you done a complete search of your hard drive for form*.dat ? Do you have multiple?

Actually I have three formhistory.dat files, two of which are backups in different folders.  However, Firefox does not know anything about the two backups, so there is only one profile as far as Firefox is concerned.

>> In your Profile, do you have search.sqlite?

Yes, I have this file in my profile folder.

>> By any chance, how is your Hard Drive space?

There is plenty of free space on my HD (several GB), so this shouldn't be a problem.

>> How did you upgrade to 2.0.0.2? Did you upgrade over 1.5.0.7?

I last upgraded from 2.0.0.1 to 2.0.0.2 using the built-in update option.

One important point I have noticed.  When I type entries into a form (not the built-in toolbar) and close Firefox, they are stored in formhistory.dat and can be deleted successfully with Clear Private Data.  However, when I try the same with the built-in search toolbar, search terms are not added to formhistory.dat.  Even though Firefox must be saving these terms somewhere, using Clear Private Data or Clear Search History does not delete the terms for the toolbar.  If it doesn't save the toolbar terms to formhistory.dat, then in what file does it actually store them in?

Thanks for your help.

I managed to figure out what was happening.  Actually there is no bug as such; apparently this appears to be behaviour by design.

To clarify, the built-in search bar pops up *two* types of searches:

1) Searches that have been typed in and remembered on the local machine.  These can be cleared successfully with Clear Search History or Clear Private Data.

2) Suggestions that pop up from Google.  Apparently, as a search term is typed, it asks Google over the Internet connection for suggestions and pops them up.  I incorrectly thought these were remembered searches from my local machine but they are not.  This is what was confusing me.

So the solution is to simply disable "Show Suggestions" and use Clear History or Clear Private Data to clear the searches that I have typed in myself.

Richard on my xp pro machine I tested with a clear formhistory.dat and then Entered some Search bar "words" and the formhistory.dat did indeed grow on my machine.

Although I need to look into this a little more, I believe the developers are working on moving away from MORK and into that formhistory.sqlite file for forms and places database.
Placing this link here to remind myself why.
http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.planning/tree/browse_frm/month/2006-04/2fdb721ad0b76b52?rnum=181&_done=%2Fgroup%2Fmozilla.dev.planning%2Fbrowse_frm%2Fmonth%2F2006-04%3F

I'll need to compare both my builds and see which is which, but my thought on your issue would be to Uninstall Firefox and this time Install to a Brand New Program folder, not the default because it simply installs over the older one. What I'm trying to do is confirm a Clean Install and A Clean Profile to see if you can replicate this issue Cleanly. Which means then you would also Create a New Profile to use with the New clean Firefox program and see if the issue still comes back.

Thanks Richard.

That is exactly what is happening.