I did not personally write this, but it’s very useful for everyone so I decided to add it.

Refreshing Web Pages

Why do I have to refresh?

Often when you visit a web page it looks as though it hasn’t changed since the last time you looked at it even though there may have been new items added to the page.

This happens because your web browser stores pages on your PC’s hard drive. When you visit a page, it is downloaded and stored. When you ‘go back’ to the page, the web browser quite often loads the version it downloaded when you last visited the web site.

It does this to save time.

You can force the web browser to download the latest version of the web page from the web site by following the steps below.

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How do I refresh?

If you are not getting the most up-to-the minute content from web sites you may need to refresh the pages cached in your web browser. If simply clicking your “Refresh” or “Reload” button doesn’t work, try this:

Internet Explorer (IE) v 4.0 and up
Hold down the control (Ctrl) button on your keyboard (Option key on Macintosh) while clicking on the Refresh button on your IE toolbar. This will reload the entire page, capturing the most recent file.
You may also clear out IE’s stored cache:

Windows users: from the View menu of the IE toolbar, click Internet Options, then click the General tab. In the Temporary Internet files area, click Delete Files, then click OK. Click OK to close Internet Options.
Windows users of Internet Explorer (IE) v 5.5 service pack 1 and up In IE 5.5 with service pack for IE 5.5 installed, holding the control key down while clicking the Refresh button forces our caching server to check with the page’s original site for a possible later page than the cache holds. Older versions of Internet Explorer for Windows cannot do so.
Mac users: from the Edit menu of the IE toolbar, click Preferences, then Web browser. Click the Advanced button, then in the Cache section, click Empty now. No Macintosh version of Internet Explorer can force our caching server to verify whether the page is current or not.

Netscape v. 4.+
Hold down the Shift key on your keyboard (Option key on Macintosh) while clicking the Reload button on the Netscape toolbar. This will reload the entire page, capturing the most recent file. In newer versions of Netscape 4.x, doing so forces the caching server to verify whether the page is current or not. We do not know whether that is true of Netscape 6; it appears not to be true of the various Mozilla builds. You may also clear out Netscape’s stored cache.
To clear out Netscape’s stored cache:

Windows users:
Click the Edit menu; click Preferences
Click the + sign to the left of Advanced
Click Cache under Advanced
Click the Clear Memory Cache button and the Clear Disk Cache button.

Mac users: The steps are the same as above, except that there is a Disclosure triangle rather than a + to the left of Advanced, and you may not need to click it to reveal the Cache item. Also the single button to click is Clear Disk Cache Now.