Removing Items from the My Recent Documents Menu In Windows XP


You can remove individual items from the My Recent Documents menu in the same way that you remove items from other parts of the Start menu: Right-click an item and choose Delete from the shortcut menu. Notice when you remove an item in this way. That’s because the Recent Documents menu reflects the contents of a hidden folder called Recent, which is stored as part of your user profile.

Windows keeps shortcuts to all newly used documents in the %UserProfile%\Recent folder but shows only the most recent on the My Recent Documents menu.

To clear the whole menu, including the backup supply of shortcuts, follow these steps:

1. Right-click the Start button, choose Properties, and click Customize.

2. If you’re using the default Start menu, click the Advanced tab and click Clear List. If you’re using the classic Start menu, click the Clear button.

Note that you can’t add items to the My Recent Documents menu by making direct additions to the Recent folder. For the purposes of building this menu, Windows simply ignores anything in the Recent folder that it didn’t put there itself. When you use the Clear List command, however, everything in the Recent folder is deleted, no matter how it got there.

If you have privacy concerns about the recently opened documents list—specifically, the ability of others to snoop in your Recent folder after you log off to see what you’ve been up to— you’ll want to enable a policy that clears the list automatically each time you log off. Follow these steps:

1. At a command prompt, type gpedit.msc to open Group Policy.

2. Open User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Start Menu And Taskbar.

3. Double-click the Clear History Of Recently Opened Documents On Exit policy.

4. On the Setting tab, select Enabled.