Start→My Recent Documents

You should see the My Recent Documents menu command in your Start menu by default. If you don’t, you can turn it on using the techniques described in the box below.

There’s one good reason for turning on this menu: It adds to your Start menu a submenu listing the last 15 documents you’ve opened. Using a list of recent documents can save you time when you want to reopen something you’ve worked on recently, but you’re not in the mood to burrow through folders to find its icon.

NOSTALGIA CORNERRestoring the Traditional Folder Listings

Some of the commands that populated the Start menus of previous Windows versions no longer appear in the home version of Windows XP. That’s by design, of course: Microsoft is trying to make its new operating system look less overwhelming to the newcomer.

But if you miss some of the old folders—My Network Places and My Recent Documents, for example—it’s easy enough to put them back.

Right-click the Start menu. From the shortcut menu, choose Properties. Now the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box appears; on the Start Menu tab, click the Customize button, and then the Advanced tab.

In the scrolling list, you’ll find a checkbox that makes My Network Places appear in the Start menu. Windows 2000 veterans may also want to turn on “Display as Connect to menu” under Network Connections, so that you have a handy submenu of network connections in your Start menu. If you scroll all the way to the bottom of the list, you’ll also see an option that adds System Administrative Tools to your All Programs menu and even to your Start menu. (You can read about these technical utilities in Chapter 16.)

At the bottom of the dialog box, turn on “List my most recently opened documents” to add the My Recent Documents command to your Start menu. Click OK twice to return to the desktop and try out your changes.

Note, however, that:

  • Documents appear on the “recently used” list only if your applications are smart enough to update it. Most modern programs (including all Microsoft programs) perform this administrative task, but not all do.

  • The Documents list doesn’t know when you’ve deleted a document or moved it to another folder or disk; it continues to list the file even after it’s gone. In that event, clicking the document’s listing produces only an error message.

Tip

Of course, there’s another easy way to open a document you’ve recently worked on. To start, simply launch the program you used to create it. Many programs maintain a list of recent documents at the bottom of the File menu; choose one of these names to open the corresponding file.

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