I ran into an annoying problem the other day where Internet Explorer would not remember a password when I was logging into a site. I don’t really remember when it stopped remembering passwords, but it didn’t seem to matter which site I would log into, it just didn’t ask me if I wanted to save or remember the password.
For online security, it’s actually not a good idea to use your browser for managing passwords, but to instead use a password manager like LastPass. I previously wrote about online security and why a tool like LastPass is a lot safer than the built-in tools in the browser. Anyway, the point is that you may want to save some passwords in IE for really low-value websites that you don’t even care if they get hacked.
In this post, I’ll show you a couple of things you can do to get IE 9 to start remembering passwords again. Hopefully one of the solutions will fix your problem.
Method 1 – Check IE Settings
First, we want to make sure IE is actually configured to save passwords. Sometimes the setting gets changed and all you have to do is enable the option again. Here’s how. First open IE and then click on the gear icon at the top right and select Internet Options.
Next, click on the Content tab and then click on Settings under the Autocomplete heading.
Now make sure that the User names and passwords on forms box and the Ask me before saving passwords box are checked and click OK.
Now go ahead and restart IE and see if the remember password dialog box pops up when you log into a website. If not, keep reading.
Method 2 – Start IE without Add-ons
There are times when a specific add-on is causing the problem and preventing IE from saving passwords. You can quickly check this by going to Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools and then clicking on Internet Explorer (No Add-ons).
If you start getting the save password option, then you know it’s one of the add-ons. You can go ahead and disable all of them and then enable them one by one until you figure out which one is causing the problem. If it’s not an add-on, keep reading.
Method 3 – Reset IE
The easiest thing to do at this point is to reset IE. You can do this by going to the Advanced tab in Internet Options and clicking on the Reset button.
You’ll get a dialog asking to confirm and asking if you want to delete personal settings too. I suggest you delete the personal settings also unless you really need to save them. It’s better to reset everything at this point.
Note that there are times when IE 9 will ask you to save a password and times when it won’t This is actually not a problem with IE 9, but a shortcoming. There are a few reasons why you may have a particular site where it won’t ask you to remember the password:
1. The page has disabled Autocomplete using a special attribute
2. The page uses Javascript to submit the login info
3. The login form is created in Javascript
4. IE 9 does not recognize there is a login form on the webpage
5. If you ever chose No when asked to save the password previously
For #1 to #3, there isn’t much you can do about this. It’s just how IE 9 works if that is the kind of page it sees. For #4, this could be because the form was written in flash, silverlight, Java, etc and IE 9 will not be able to detect the login form. For #5, if you ever chose No, there is no way in IE to undo that. Luckily, someone at Microsoft wrote a small tool that will let you see all the sites you chose “Do Not Remember” and undo that action. You can check out the following post here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ieinternals/archive/2010/04/09/restoring-the-internet-explorer-password-autocomplete-prompt.aspx
Like I mentioned before, extensions like LastPass are much better because they can recognize the login forms for a lot more websites, so you don’t have that works sometimes, but not other times kind of issue. Also, it’s a lot more secure and easier to use. Enjoy!
