For an average user, internet explorer is dead and there is no simple method to be able to use East browser in Windows 11. In July 2022, Microsoft made the decision to officially retire it. However, there are still some websites built on old frameworks, usually from government and financial institutions, ironically the ones that should be more up-to-date, although that is a topic for another article.
Here we will see several methods to enable and use Internet Explorer in Windows 11. Obviously, we do not recommend using this browser other than to visit some websites that are too specific. It is not recommended to use it to browse the web.
Enable and use Internet Explorer in Windows 11 from Control Panel
thanks to the user xenopanther From Twitter we have found a very interesting trick to be able to use Internet Explorer in Windows 11. It is not necessary to download anything at all, with a few clicks we can use the browser without any kind of problem.
However, we must consider that this trick does not work on some versions of Windows. In our case, we have tested it on the latest Windows 11 Stable and Developer builds and it worked without issue.
We start by pressing the Windows key to open the start menu and here we will write Internet Options. We proceed to press Enter to open it among the search results.
Now we are going to have to go to the tab that says Programs and we will click on Manage Add-ons.
Next, we are going to have to click on More information about toolbars and extensions, we can find this option in the lower left corner of the screen.
Once we did this, Internet Explorer will open immediately on our Windows 11 computer.
Using a VBS shortcut to use Internet Explorer
We can also activate Internet Explorer mode in the same Microsoft Edge browser to be able to visit old websites. Although if we really want to access Internet Explorer with the original interface, then the VBS script lets us do it.
In our case, we tested this script on the stable version of Windows 11 Pro 22H2 of November 2022 and it worked without any kind of inconvenience.
The first thing we will do is right click on an empty space on the desktop and go to New > Text Document from the context menu.
In this notepad we are going to have to copy and paste the code that we will see below: CreateObject(“InternetExplorer.Application”).Visible=true
After this, we go to the upper left and we will have to choose File > Save As.
Before saving it, we are going to have to click on the dropdown menu below the file name box and select All files (*.*).
After this, we will be able to assign any name to the file, the only thing we will have to make sure is that the extension is .vbs at the end. We finish this part by saving the file where we want.
Now we will see that the file was created and we will have to double click on it. In this way, Internet Explorer 11 will open on our PC and it will work without any kind of problems. Every time we want to use this browser, we will simply have to open it from this shortcut.
Enable Internet Explorer mode in Microsoft Edge
Finally, what we can do is enable IE mode in Microsoft Edge. Although we are not going to be using Internet Explorer, but we will be able to visit old websites without any kind of problem and with better security thanks to the latest Microsoft browser.
For this we are going to have to open Microsoft Edge.
Now we are going to have to click on the icon with three points that is in the upper right corner and we are going to select Settings.
What we will do next is go to Default Browser from the left sidebar.
From this section we are going to have to change Allow Internet Explorer to open sites in Microsoft Edge to Always (recommended).
After this we are going to Allow sites to load in Internet Explorer mode (IE Mode) to Allow from the drop-down menu and we will have to click on Restart for the changes to take effect.
Once it starts up again, we’re going to click Add next to Pages in Internet Explorer mode and we’re going to have to enter the full URL of the website we want to visit. The next thing will be to open this website as we would normally do with any other.
Nor is it necessary that we add the pages from the configuration options. If we want to do it quickly, we are going to have to open a page and right-click on the three-dot icon at the top right. Here we will have to select Show in the toolbar.
Now we will be able to see a button for IE mode in the toolbar. From now on, whenever we are on a web page, we can press that button to enable IE mode and it will load the web in the old framework.
