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Summary: Documents, or my Recent Documents, is Windows trying to be helpful by making it easy to access recent work. Sometimes it's a little too visible.
It turns out that it's not all that hard to clear the list and if so desired, hide it as well. • It's called "Documents" on versions of Windows prior to XP, or if you've selected "Classic Start menu" in XP, it'll show as "My Recent Documents". Regardless of what it's called, if you click on Start and then hover you mouse over the menu item, you'll see a sub-menu pop out that includes some of the documents most recently opened through many Windows programs:
Not everyone wants their most recent documents so easily visible to anyone who walks by. The good news is that it's easy to clear. Removing it completely is just a little more work. • To clear your recent document history, right click on Start and click on Properties. You'll have either Start Menu or Classic Start Menu selected; click the corresponding Customize button. Here's the resulting dialog for the Classic Start Menu:
I've highlighted the relevant section: click on the Clear button to clear the recent documents list. In the default (not classic) Start Menu, the setting is one more level down. When you click on Properties, you'll see this dialog:
Click on the Advanced tab:
Click the Clear List button to clear the list. • To turn off the recent document history, things get just a little more complicated. Maybe. That last dialog we pictured had something interesting in it:
If you use the default Start Menu, this option does exactly what we want. Uncheck List my most recently opened documents and the "My Recent Documents" menu item will disappear. Unfortunately that setting does not affect the Classic Start Menu so if you're using Classic Start Menu (as I am), things get more interesting. If you're running Windows XP Pro, the safest way to make this, and many other configuration changes, is to use the Group Policy Editor. Click on Start, then Run... enter "gpedit.msc" and click on OK:
Once you're in the group policy editor, expand un turn User Configuration, Administrative Templates, and then Start Menu and Taskbar:
As you can see, there's a setting that sounds exactly like what we're looking for: Remove Documents menu from Start Menu. Double click on that to get:
Click on "Enabled", and click on OK. This setting requires that you reboot before it takes effect. Once you do:
You'll notice that there's no "Documents" item. • If you're running Windows XP Home you may not have the group policy editor. That means you'll need to edit the registry directly - be sure to back it up first. Start, Run, "regdt32":
Navigate to the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ Explorer:
Double click on No RecentDocsMenu and set the Value Data to 1. Click OK, and close registry editor. As before, a reboot might be required before this setting change takes effect. Related:
Article 11774 | Posted August 21, 2007 |
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While tweaking Win Xp (including the tweak shown above), I somehow must have corrupted the registry.
Now, when I try to access the group policy dialog box (run>gpedit.msc) I get an error which says "Snap-in failed to initialize"...
The group policy dialog box comes up with a big red X symbol and states this error: "Snap-in creation failed. The snap-in is not created, it may not be installed properly. Name: Group Policy Object Editor. CLSID: {8FCOB734-AOE1-11D1-A7D3-OOOOF87571E3}"
I have done this tweak on other computers, here in our small office, with no incident.
Any help on restoring this would be greatly appreciated.
Posted by: Eric Bono at September 6, 2007 12:09 PMWow...thanks so much. Who needs Tweak XP"...you can do it all right from there.
Much appreciated!!!
Posted by: Derrick4Real at September 28, 2007 07:45 PMThanks a million.........it helped me remove certain things i didnt want others 2 see......thnx
Posted by: kunal at October 27, 2007 10:54 PMYou can let Winfilter help remove any item from the Start menu. For detail, you can check its website http://updownsoft.com. I am one of its users and think it is very helpful.
Posted by: Yuta at November 3, 2007 09:24 AMNote that "Remove Documents menu from Start Menu" will remove not only recent documents, but the entire douments folder. To just remove recent documents from the classic start menu there is another option in the same section of group policy editor, "Do not keep history of recently opened documents". That way, you documents folder remains, but without the list of recently accessed documents.
Posted by: Nigel at March 7, 2008 12:40 PMHi
I'm using XP Pro, SP 2
When I go Start/Documents
I don't see any of my new Office 2007 files.
Obviously, they're in the relevant "Recent Files" list in the program itself, Word, Excel or Access.
But they're not in the Recent Dcouments Folder.
Any idea why not ???
Thanks
Eoin
Posted by: My problem is the other way round! at April 7, 2008 05:40 AMI use Windows XP Pro and every file, folder or drive I go to shows up in both RECENT and MY RECENT DOCUMENTS AS SHORTCuTS.
Posted by: NC White at June 29, 2008 09:54 AMI do not like having all of these shortcuts in my computer. I have been going to SEARCH and typing RECENT and then I just delete them all. I do not know if I am doing the right thing. I would like to know how to stop these shortcuts from going into them. I prefer to make my own shortcuts. HELP!
i appreciate this website.. i've learn many things in this website.. more power and thank you very much
Posted by: deidei at July 3, 2008 06:04 PMWow! Thanks a ton! I finally don't have that annoying "Documents" option on my classic start menu!
Thanks again!
Posted by: Jim at August 24, 2008 08:36 PMBig thanks! This helps me to prevent domestic troubles :D
Posted by: tujula at August 29, 2008 12:54 AM