Trying to clear file listing for Word/Excel 2010

[statsman]

Setup: Windows 10 Pro, Office 2010 Word and Excel

The following occurs for both Word and Excel. When I select "Save As" from the File menu, I get a menu that includes a "File Name" field. If I click on the down-arrow on that field, I get a list of files I previously saved this way. I would like to clear out this list. Any ideas on how I do that? This list has become quite unwieldy.

Please note I have disabled Recent Documents and Recent Places under File -> Recent for both Word and Excel, so there are no files or folders listed there. The above "Save As" menu, along with the "Open" menu, have their own list of files they retain. I tried searching the registry for one of the files in the pull-down list, but I didn't get a hit.

EDIT: This may be a Windows "feature" rather than specific to the Office 2010 applications. I get similar (albeit smaller) lists in applications like WordPad.

 

[njhowie]

As I surmised, they are stored in the registry:

Edit the Windows registry to clear the list of most recently used files in Office

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot/settings/clear-most-recently-used-file

 

[statsman]

As I surmised, they are stored in the registry:

Edit the Windows registry to clear the list of most recently used files in Office

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot/settings/clear-most-recently-used-file

I saw that website earlier. Those locations are nonexistent in my registry, meaning they are empty because they show up empty within each Office application (Recent Documents and Recent Places).

I actually believe this is more of a Windows feature than with Office since I also see the previous "Save As" and "Open" lists for non-Office applications.

 

[gauss]

Can you search the registry for one of the filenames in the list to find if they are in there somewhere?

-gauss

 

[njhowie]

I saw that website earlier. Those locations are nonexistent in my registry, meaning they are empty because they show up empty within each Office application (Recent Documents and Recent Places).

I actually believe this is more of a Windows feature than with Office since I also see the previous "Save As" and "Open" lists for non-Office applications.

With Excel 2003 on Win 7 my location is here:
HKEY_USERS\...\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\Open Find\Microsoft Office Excel\Settings\Save As\File Name MRU


With Excel 2007 on Win 7 my location is here:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Excel\File MRU


I would say to search your registry for the Office hive and then MRU.

 

[statsman]

Can you search the registry for one of the filenames in the list to find if they are in there somewhere?

From my initial post: "I tried searching the registry for one of the files in the pull-down list, but I didn't get a hit."

 

[statsman]

With Excel 2003 on Win 7 my location is here:
HKEY_USERS\...\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\Open Find\Microsoft Office Excel\Settings\Save As\File Name MRU

With Excel 2007 on Win 7 my location is here:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Excel\File MRU

I would say to search your registry for the Office hive and then MRU.

With Word/Excel 2010 on Win 10, my locations are here:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Excel\File MRU
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Word\File MRU

The only entry in each location is a single DWORD of "Max Display" that has been set to 0. This confirms why I am not seeing anything else in these registry locations, nor in the applications themselves.

 

[njhowie]

With Word/Excel 2010 on Win 10, my locations are here:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Excel\File MRU
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Word\File MRU

The only entry in each location is a single DWORD of "Max Display" that has been set to 0. This confirms why I am not seeing anything else in these registry locations, nor in the applications themselves.

That's interesting, because in mine, in each of the registry entries I have the full list of files that I see in the drop down.

My Maximum Entries is set to 0x0000000a(10)

 

[statsman]

Well, I can hide the dropdown lists, but it's a global change that impacts all (?) applications within Windows 10:

https://winaero.com/disable-recent-files-dropdown-list-in-file-dialog-in-windows-10/

This highlights the dropdown lists I am trying to clear out. These were available in the registry by application within Windows 7, but Windows 10 appears to be hiding it somewhere (registry or data file).

 

[statsman]

Well, I can hide the dropdown lists, but it's a global change that impacts all (?) applications within Windows 10:

https://winaero.com/disable-recent-files-dropdown-list-in-file-dialog-in-windows-10/

This highlights the dropdown lists I am trying to clear out. These were available in the registry by application within Windows 7, but Windows 10 appears to be hiding it somewhere (registry or data file).

I finally found where these dropdown lists are located in Windows 10 (and probably Windows 7). I actually had shortcuts to the folders on my desktop, but they were created a long time ago when I was looking at this same issue and had forgotten about them.

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations\
%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\CustomDestinations\

Located in each folder is a "*-ms" file that contains the lists for each application. It is not trivial to figure out which list belongs to which application, but it can be done. Application IDs are part of the individual file names, and a search can usually reveal which applications belong to each ID.

Note: The blank space in the two paths I listed above seems to be related to the same artifact that some users have with multiple newlines for a single <enter> key. This one happens when listing locations on a PC or registry where the location has a path structure. The blank space seems to be in the same spot (number of characters from the start of each line).

 

[njhowie]

Good job!

On Win 7 the file shortcuts are stored at:
%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent Items

There are no folders for AutomaticDestinations or CustomDestinations.

On Win 7, this is more like a global MRU list. Office (2003/2007) is getting the dropdown lists from the registry entry I previously replied with.