Using Xenu to Check a Web Site

Doubleclick the Program icon to open Xenu's Link Sleuth, or type the path and the xenu.exe filename in the "Run" command found under the Windows "Start" button.

A Xenu window will appear on your desktop. You can now use Xenu's Link Sleuth to check for broken links.

1. Under the File menu, select Check URL. Or, click on the white 'page' icon located on the left end of the toolbar.
2. A dialogue box called "Xenu's starting point" will appear.
3. Enter the URL of the page you would like to check links on in the first box. You should enter the URL in the format http://www.server.edu/~username/ (enter the correct URL and server information). If you'd like Xenu to check an entire website, you should enter the main or index page of the site. Xenu can check any website, so it will work on www.microsoft.com and so on.
4. The Browse button will allow you to check a local HTML file by browsing to its location on your computer. You can check links before uploading your pages to the web server by using this function.
5. The Check external links checkbox is selected by default; if you don't want Xenu to check external links (links to sites outside of your site) then deselect this box.
6. You can set certain URLs as 'internal' in the next box.
7. You can exclude URLs that you don't want checked in the next box.
8. Click OK button to begin checking.

Once you've checked a website, a small DOC icon will appear to the left of the File menu, and the main window will show up the report, containing the list and color-coded status of all the links checked by Xenu.