Clear Recent Documents in the XP Start Menu
Nobody is asking why you want to clear the recent documents from your XP start menu, but we’ll show you how to do it anyway.
Right click the start menu icon and select Properties. Click the Start Menu tab and click on Customize.
In the Customize Start Menu window click on the Advanced tab.
Now you have two options:
1) Click the Clear List button to just clear the recent documents.
2) Uncheck the “List my most recently opened documents” box to make the entire feature go away.
Mysticgeek is the resident IT expert at How-To Geek and a huge rock music fan. His daily articles can be found at Mysticgeek's Realm. This article was written on 05/28/07 and tagged with: Windows
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Re Disabling ‘My Recent Documents’ in XP, you said;
2) Uncheck the “List my most recently opened documents” box to make the entire feature go away.
But that’s not the case. A record still accumulates in that file – very bad for privacy, etc.
Also, just got another PC with Vista (Vista is BAD), and I wonder if it’s got a similar file.
Great site anyway. Thanks for the help on many other subjects.
This does not completely clear recent documents from the computer. Vista tracks recent documents in another folder, “Recent Documents”. This folder is found inside the “Searches” folder of the login user. Also tracked is “Recent E-mail”, “Recent Pictures and Videos”, “Recently Changed” etc.
How to prevent Vista from tracking these files in these folders? I thought I could delete the files in these search folders but when I delete the files, it will actually delete the actual files in the source folders. It seems the files in the search folders are not shortcuts but actual files. Strange, how could one file appear in 2 folders – the source and the search folder.
If there is no way to prevent Vista from tracking user files in the search folders, how to clear the search folders?
I also want to know the answer of this question “how to clear the search”? can we delete the contents of the folder?
Very helpful.Thanks a lot.
wow! great… a simple task. thank you!
It’s a lengthy process my brother. I have a simple technique instead. In the “Run”command type a dot(.) and press enter,in the window that appears click on recent documents and clear them all. Ok bye.
This doesn’t work with Windows XP with the classic start menu..any idea how to do it?
@Shenton: Those are not real folders. They are just a view of items returned from the Windows Search index. You would have to disable the search indexing to stop the display in those virtual search folders.
2 Bruno:
it works almost the same way; open Start button properties, then click setup button right to the Classic mode selection, new dialog opens and there’s a button to clear recent documents list. It could be grayed in case your list is already cleared.
relating to this topic, would going into the regIstry and deleting:
My Computer\HKEY+CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MIRCOSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\EXPLORE\USER SHELL FOLDER\RECENT
SOLVE THIS PROBLEM????
@vern: No. That key contains the path the folder where recent file shortcuts are stored. It won’t help clear the recent file shortcuts.
Could anyone tell me if it’s possible to make a single-click shortcut to the clear history function?
Time is money and I use that dialogue at least once a week and I hate going through so many clicks for something that basic.
go to C:\Documents and Settings\(your user name)\Recent
(create shortcut to that folder if u delete often)
In the folder, Ctrl+A then delete. All gone!
run %USERPROFILE%\Recent and then highlight everything and then delete it
Kk said:
Go to C:\Documents and Settings\(your user name)\Recent
(create shortcut to that folder if u delete often)
In the folder, Ctrl+A then delete. All gone!
In case of Windows Vista (in a dos window, go to c:\users\ and type dir /ah and you’ll see the link), c:\users\\Recent is a link to c:\users\\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent
In this folder, all items are shortcuts to your recently used files. Ctrl+A, then delete (as Kk said) and they are all gone.
@montyoto: Since time is money, create a new file in notepad and put this line in int:
del C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\*.* /Q
and save the file on your desktop as “recent.bat”. Make sure the extention is .bat and not .bat.txt or something like that. Double clicking on this file now opens a dos windows which removes all files from the “recent” directory without asking for confirmation (the /q option). Two clicks and all shortcuts are gone. Since time is money.
I hope this helped!
thanks!
Serge,
While it is still possible to clear the docs when using the Classic menu, I can see no way to disable the function entirely, as you can when using the XP start menu.
Anyone know, or will this require a registry adjustment?
It’s pretty simple to turn off the XP feature that saves recent docs history. Go into the registry, then go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
add a new entry called “NoRecentDocsHistory” and make the value “1″.
Done