Can't view source in IE

Can't view source in IE

Most of the people I know suddenly experience, that it suddenly is impossible to use the "View source" functionality in the Internet Explorer. The problem occurs due to a bug in IE if you've set your Temporate Internet Files too high. If you decrease this seting to less than 80MB, the problem stops. If not, try to delete all temporary files.

IMPORTANT Update: This sounds strange, but if you have a shortcut to Notepad on your desktop, it will also prevent you from viewing source!!!

Update (feb 26, 2004): From my unique user tracking system www.maptheuser.com I can see, that Microsoft during the last 24 hours has visited this page 10 times and spend quite some time here. I hope they are doing a fix for this problem now.

By jens @ 22 May, 2003 01:55



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Before, I was often tied and depressed. But then I tried Hørup's Technology log. Now, I’m much better. Thank you for the help Hørup's Technology log.

By Henrik Olsen @ 23 May, 2003 03:35

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I've been trying to fix this 'view source' problem for a few weeks. It's been really frustrating, but I'm really lazy.... this makes fixing programming bugs much easier!

By joe @ 26 July, 2003 04:58

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Cool, I was wondering what was causing this annoying bug.

By Rex Nebular @ 29 July, 2003 04:52

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YAYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By @ 06 August, 2003 08:51

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I'd like to join everyone else and say "Cheers, you've saved my brain."

By keith bloom @ 19 August, 2003 06:20

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Hey, I had this problem and tried your suggestions to no avail... and then discovered by accident that if you have a shortcut to Notepad on your desktop it also prevents you from viewing source. Yowwwwza, Kaaaarasy.
XP, IE6, no love.

By seamus0g @ 22 August, 2003 07:21

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Thanks! We were sitting ehre for wuite some time in the office attempting to DL patches and service packs, all to no avail. Then I just went in and changed the MB field and *poof* How exactly does this bug work?

By Matthew W... @ 27 August, 2003 05:51

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its still not working for me><!! i did everything you said T_T

By anonymous @ 31 August, 2003 09:52

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Thanks, removing the shortcut to notepad from my desktop fixed the problem!

Regards,
Mike

By Mike C @ 05 September, 2003 06:39

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thanks!

By @ 13 September, 2003 02:02

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YOU FLIPPIN GENIUS!

I've been going nuts over this fault for MONTHS. Who would have thought a benign Notepad shortcut would cause the problem? Not I that for sure!

Cheers!
-=Phoo=-

By Phooey @ 03 November, 2003 03:07

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Very cool! Thanks so much for the help!

By MPerry @ 06 November, 2003 12:11

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Brilliant!

By Chris Poteet @ 06 November, 2003 01:30

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wah hay! it worked 4 me. Cheers for your help.

With all the best wishes
Boushra
London

By Boushra Sanosi @ 08 November, 2003 07:28

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Coooooooollllllll. I decreased the Tempory Internet Files to less than 80MB and it's working okay. Thanks

By Donkey @ 21 November, 2003 11:30

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My page is asp, form submiting to self. View source is fine before submission, but cannot view source after submit, altho IE does modify/write page according to values submitted.

By Gloria @ 21 November, 2003 07:25

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Live saver! Spot on.

Thanks!

By Mabel Botswana @ 02 December, 2003 02:45

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Holy crap! I bet I never ran into this because I never had my IE Temp Files set so high... I finally ran into the point where it was too high to view the source... After 10 min of letting it do nothing but delete those files, it worked. Thanks.

By Matt Z @ 05 December, 2003 04:01

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I had my temporary internet files set to 700 megs... I've used the "delete all temporary internet files" workaround before, but this makes life easier, thanks :)

By Martin Mouritzen @ 09 December, 2003 12:18

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Thanks very much! Google found this site first with "can't view source ie" and solved my problem right off -- Karen

By Karen N @ 17 December, 2003 08:53

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You are wonderful!!!!!I never thought the size of temp files would stop view source from working. First hit on google, 2 minutes later, its working.

Thank you.

By srikanth @ 20 December, 2003 09:55

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Good show! Removing the shortcut worked for me as well, thank you for saving me years of frustration.

By Steve @ 21 December, 2003 06:50

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godt gået

By Søren Grynnerup @ 02 January, 2004 06:07

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I typed "view source problem notepad" in Google, the first that came up was this site, deleted the shortcut to Notepad on the Windows desktop, and: VOALA, fixed! Thanks (",)

By Svend @ 12 January, 2004 12:05

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at last i can sleep easy again. i was going mad for about 6 months on this problem

By mark @ 13 January, 2004 03:46

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Great info. This bug has been driveing me crazy. All working now thanks to your post!

By Ryan Farley @ 14 January, 2004 06:58

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What the heck? I deleted the shortcut to notepad and now it works. Very odd indeed. Thanks.

By Tony Rodriguez @ 17 January, 2004 12:46

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cheers mate. been cursing at the comp for the last couple of days. Fixed now. Perhaps limit of 1100MB of temp internet files was too much :)


By @ 21 January, 2004 12:09

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Thank you so much. Lowered my Temporary internet files and voila problem solved.

By Travis @ 24 January, 2004 08:56

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Thanks. I first started having this problem only when trying to view the source on .net pages (.aspx). Then I started having trouble saving pictures by right clicking on them. Finally a few weeks after this problem first started I could not view source on any page no matter the type. After reading this I lowered the Temporary Internet Files setting down from 1024 to 20. All my issues cleared up and debugging is much easier again. Thanks again.

By Rob C @ 24 January, 2004 10:36

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Just perfect!!!!

By Cláudio Sokota Cardoso @ 04 February, 2004 07:05

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This is awesome...

By kris @ 04 February, 2004 11:55

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If you really want a notepad shortcut on your desktop after you removed it, you can add a blank.txt document which is almost the same.

By Jonathan Porter @ 20 February, 2004 05:43

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thanks so much..........

By teresa @ 21 February, 2004 02:50

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Boy, Microsoft sure knows how to drive people insane. I tried everything to fix this, and the Notepad thing worked. You'd think this would have been addressed by now.

By nick @ 26 February, 2004 07:25

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nice one... happy days!

more code blaggage to follow! ha ha!

:D

who'd a thunk it?

By @ 26 February, 2004 04:49

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Whenever I go to view source in IE 6 it links me directly to 5o.net. No idea why, can't seem to fix it with any of the methods I've found online including reducing my cache, deleting temp internet files, and don't have a link to notepad. Anyone got a clue?

By Brad @ 29 February, 2004 07:34

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Nevermind I found what was wrong. Something, somehow, changed my registry "My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\View Source Editor\Editor Name" data field to that link 5o.net, still have no idea how it got that way but replacing it with the path to notepad.exe seemed to fix it fine.

By Brad @ 29 February, 2004 07:53

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First time I faced the problem was trying to save the image by right clicking on it. I could only save it in bmp format. Then View Source started giving me problems. I almost thought of downloading IE and reinstalling it which would have worked but the problem would still occur after the temp. file size exceeded 80 MB.

Thanks a ton Hørup for solving this mysterious bug.

By Kisan @ 01 March, 2004 06:23

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Thanks a ton! Good riddance to another annoying Microsoft quirk.

By Crudely Evans @ 02 March, 2004 05:16

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I can't belive it, but this worked! I looked all over MSDN on Microsoft.com for this problem, and couldn't find anything related to View Source not working in IE. THANKS!

By Philip @ 04 March, 2004 04:47

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You rock! I've had this problem for months. I kept reinstalling and installing service packs. Tonight I had the idea of googling for "can't view source in ie". Fixed! And when I save an image it comes up with the right name and format.

thanks,
Dave

By Dave Wilson @ 08 March, 2004 03:06

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You made my day!

Thanks for the tip... It was making me go crazy!

By Noel @ 12 March, 2004 06:48

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Thanks for solving this M$-problem.

By Eles @ 14 March, 2004 05:54

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Thanks for posting this, the internet rulez ;-)

By Danny @ 15 March, 2004 02:47

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Good Stuff. Searched in Google, Came here, BAM, fixed. Just thought I'll leave this comment. You've helped so many people since July of '03! Don't know how you figured how to fix it, but it works. Good Job

By Felix Lin @ 18 March, 2004 10:47

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THANK YOU!!!!!

By Lisa @ 24 March, 2004 06:34

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Thanks, this helped me out.

By clk @ 25 March, 2004 12:50

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I can view source, but notepad renames my files with things like C__program_index[1] when I open
them from the harddrive, and it wants to save them in the temporary internet files folder...

By John @ 25 March, 2004 05:09

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Thanks so much. As soon as I deleted the Notepad shortcut from my desktop View Source "magically" worked again. I had already deleted my temporary internet files to no avail and was ready to give up.

By @ 03 April, 2004 06:03

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wow, thats really weird..
i deleted the shortcut and it was fixed...

Thanks alot!

By ian from canada @ 05 April, 2004 02:06

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Well done.
'Favorites' -> 'Add to Favorites...' -> 'Ok'

By Matt W @ 14 April, 2004 06:34

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That is Soooooooooooooooooooooo brillaint mate....been hacked off by this for months....fixed :o)

By Adam Pink @ 22 April, 2004 06:13

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This has had me stumped for weeks. Thanks SO much!

By Melissa Raulston @ 29 April, 2004 12:27

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Brilliant, one quick search found this info - I tried it, it worked, I got on with my life.

Thanks for publishing this!

Simon

By Simon Collingridge @ 29 April, 2004 11:05

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Outstanding. Just brilliant. Thanks for this. I've been pissed off by this for weeks if not months.

By Matt @ 29 April, 2004 05:57

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Wow, Thank you, I stocked with this problem over 6 month, after I set Temporary files to 70Mb it worked!!!

By Vlad @ 29 April, 2004 06:47

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Well, I have tried everything that you suggest, but I still can not view the source of the page. (XP Pro, IE 6 SP1)
Can anyone help?
I am thinking to switch Win for Linux!

By Alex @ 30 April, 2004 11:53

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One up for the Danes, nice one! Microsoft have given a 'possible' solution on their site, but not one which works. Who'd've thought that a little shortcut could cause so big a problem. Thanks Jens!

By JoeKing @ 03 May, 2004 12:42

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Thanks soooo much! NOT ONE of my "computer obessed" friends knew how to fix this problem! I didn't know all I had to do was decrease the size of Temporary Internet Files! This was very hellpful.

By Erica @ 07 May, 2004 01:03

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Nice work. This problem has only been around since NT. Fat chance MS is going to fix this one. Inexcusable.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;306907
It is related to the "can only save image as bitmap (.bmp) bug" that is fixed in the same way. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;810978

By BlueBadge @ 08 May, 2004 10:51

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hey man, thanks a great deal for taking the time to help all of us.

By Tdao @ 14 May, 2004 07:16

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Searching and reading and searching and reading and all I had to do was delete my notepad shortcut from my desktop LOLOLOLOL.... Thank you!!! ps: my temp limit is at 100mb and all is well. Thanks again!

By Allan @ 02 June, 2004 11:59

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Congratulations... Thank you for posting this!!!! It saved me from reinstalling IE ;-)

By Mike @ 09 June, 2004 12:33

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LOL!

Thank you very much. I wanna give you a big hug!!!

By RosiTa @ 30 June, 2004 07:58

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Cool! I reduced the size of the internet files and it worked. This problem was so annoying!
Hats off for finding the soluting & publishing it.

By Anju @ 03 July, 2004 07:21

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whenever i view source in ie ,I can view source, but notepad renames my files with things like C__program_index[1] when I open
them from the harddrive, and it wants to save them in the temporary internet files rather than saving to original html file ...

ramesh kamath

By ramesh kamath @ 07 August, 2004 12:40

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Thank very much...I had the notepad shortcut on my desktop for a while now. Could never view source. Glad its fixed.
But, I have a briliant idea for a good office joke...I will pay a visit to our designers PCs tomorrow...lol

By serg @ 28 August, 2004 02:38

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wow, i lived with this problem for 2 years now and here this fix has been sittingfor 1.5 of those years, heh. i was just doing a "save as" on the web pages and reading it that way, but what a pain

By thank_you @ 22 September, 2004 03:25

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Wow... never thought such stupid bugs of Microsoft can have such wonderful work-arounds. I did not have a shortcut for notepad on my desktop, neither did I have my temp. files over 80MB. I did have a shortcut to "FireFox" browser on my Desktop, though. When I deleted the shortcut, it fixed my problem.

Thanks guys for the wonderful forum.
-Ezz

By Ezz @ 05 January, 2005 12:02

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This has been bugging me for 2 years now but I never got around to fixing it, until now. (I've been reading the code through Netscape.)

I was so excited when I reduced the temporary files setting to 79 and the "View Source" worked!

Thank you!!!

By jen @ 25 January, 2005 06:22

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Alright, I'll add my kudo's too.
My home box did this and the MS Technet articles suggested deleteing temp files etc but the notepad idea here struck me as odd.
Sure enough, delete the shortcut while viewing this page and without even a refresh or open/close it could instantly view source!
Thanks!!!!

By AHIT @ 02 February, 2005 10:38

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THANKS!
I had to both decrease the temp file settings and the stupid Notepad bug before I got it working but never would have managed without you guys!

By Thora @ 16 February, 2005 05:02

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I just love screwing with you people. Tiny little things bring the most joy. Next, I am going to build a giiiant umbrella and deploy it over springto.. er seattle.

By Bill Gates @ 30 November, 2005 02:32


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