MS-IE: Avoiding Caching Stale WEB Pages

[Webtest]

Esteemed Forum Participants and Lurkers:
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MS Internet Explorer 6.0.2800 - Windows 2000 Pro, Office 2003

We have been having some problems on our WAN where some users are opening stale links to on-line surveys even though a newer survey has been posted to the Net. I believe it is because these users are picking up the stale links through the browser cache.

If the IE Browser is configured to "Check for newer versions of stored pages: > Automatically", shouldn't it refresh a page if any link on the page has changed? The URL of the on-line survey does change each time the survey is updated because the survey filename is different.

I don't know how IE works, and I need enough information and knowledge to address the situation intelligently with the IT department. Is IT not doing something that needs to be done to mark pages as "updated" or "new" so that IE knows to refresh?

Thank you for any and all comments, suggestions, and assistance.

[dglienna]

You could set it to refresh always.

[Webtest]

Sorry ... "Refresh Always" is not an option ... the majority of the most important users are on an incredibly slow backbone ... about the same as 56k dialup (on good days!).

I still want to understand how IE figures out "automatically" that a page is updated and needs to be refreshed.