In Windows start menu, we can see the list of recently opened documents(text, word, excel, power point, image files etc). In Window XP and Server 2003, this is named ‘Recent Documents‘ where as in Vista and Windows 7, it’s named ‘Recent Items‘. The list looks like the following in Windows 7.
This list of recent documents/recent items can be deleted from command line by executing the below command.
reg delete HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RecentDocs /a
The changes will be effective immediately.
Disable recent documents list in start menu
We can make windows not to show the recent documents list in the start menu. This can be done by running the following command.
reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced /v Start_ShowRecentDocs /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
In this case, the changes won’t be effective until you log off from the current session and log in back.
To enable recent items list we can run the following command.
reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced /v Start_ShowRecentDocs /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
I have tested the above commands on Windows 7 and have found them to be working. If you have tried this commands on XP/Vista, please share the results.
Related Posts:
All about enabling/disabling Recent items/documents feature in Windows 7
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
XP SP3 – fail. — Have you tested this? Have you viewed your page? (the code box is so small you can hardly see the code). How about adding a working script to download? Maybe include a way to delete a single file from the recent docs?
The same registry key holds the list of items on XP also, so it should work on XP too. I’ve changed the page to show the command clearly. Can you try again and share the result here?