Vista: Clear Recent Items

Contributor Icon Contributed by David Kirk     
Tag Icon Tagged: Microsoft Vista  

Purging the Recent Items list on the Start menu is easy. Here is how to do it.


If you don’t like the recent items list, hack_vista has already shown how one can prevent items from ever appearing there.

However, if you were just viewing that questionable photo and want to clear your Recent Items list, here is how to do it.

1. Left-click the Start Orb to open the Start menu
2. Right-click on Recent Items
3. Select Clear Recent Items List

 

17 Comments -


  1. roger said on March 30, 2009

    it does not get cleared altogether……….the questionable material still comes out on recent items list when we search

  2. Jesse said on April 3, 2009

    When I right click on Recent Items. Clear recent items list is not a choice on the menue. It used to be a menue choice but it’s gone. i’d like it back. Any Ideas on how to get back.

  3. fl4ir said on May 23, 2009

    whys it always crash windows explorer when i try clear recent items? i think it could be to do with long filenames but its so annoying. i see why some ppl hate vista when they cant get simple thing like this right, or offer a fix. =(

  4. Anonymous said on July 11, 2009

    just follow the steps given above…that is
    click start->right click recent items->clear recent items will appear. click it
    voila

  5. Phil said on August 1, 2009

    Not true…like Jesse above,..clear recent items, is not show as a choice on my list

  6. Steve said on August 11, 2009

    I have to agree with the others who say there is no “Clear Recent Items List”. Clicking Explore brings up Windows Explorer pointing to the Recent folder where you can then delete all (or selected) shortcuts.

  7. Anonymous said on October 23, 2009

    thanks

  8. Ticked off at Vista said on January 26, 2010

    Ditto for me, I don’t get a drop down list. Anyone know where the folder is that stores these so I can just delete everything from it like I used to in XP?

  9. divyang said on February 17, 2010

    i can’t get “clear recent items” by right clicking recent items.

  10. Helpful Anon said on July 1, 2010

    If you right click and click open, you can select them all and delete them that way.

  11. Ccc221 said on August 18, 2010

    You can switch the start menu to the classic view as in XP by right clicking on a blank space which gives you properties…click on properties, click on start menu, select classic…apply…click on customize…clear records option is there, as before.

  12. Keill Randor said on September 28, 2010

    You can delete if you hover the mouse over the file that you want to delete – it should go light blue. Then press Ctrl + Del. You can use the cursor keys to move up and down the file list.

  13. Drew said on October 14, 2010

    right click on the bottom and go to properties then start menu and at the bottom it says privacy and gives you to options to unclick “store and display a list of recently opened files”

  14. mixmaster said on January 22, 2011

    Thanks Drew….that worked, what I did was uncheck both boxes and clicked apply then the “recent” was gone, then I went back and re-checked them, which brought the recent back and it was empty at that point.

  15. Wiqarali said on March 28, 2011

    The better way would be to change your menu style to classic , then go to properties and customize and clear the items history,

    after that you can again switch to new menu style while the list will be cleared.

  16. Jason5670 said on April 7, 2011

    that just doesnt work why is this so hard to delete old file names in the drop down box

  17. abdul said on January 28, 2012

    It Worked, thanks soo much bro !!!

 

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