Documents Menu, Take 2

All Versions The October 2001 Windows Tips described ways to access recently used documents beyond the measly 15 on the Start, Documents menu. But you can make your own menu of recent shortcuts and add to it as you wish, and retain the shortcuts for as long as you like. All you need is a freeware program and a few command lines typed in Notepad and saved as a batch file.

Preliminary steps: Before making your batch file, create a menu that will show your recent shortcuts. Right-click the Start button, choose Open, right-click an empty area of the folder, and select New, Folder. This folder will be your new Documents menu, so give it a name, such as More Docs, and press Enter.

Tsahi Chitin's TDel freeware replacement for DOS's Delete command lets you delete old shortcuts based on their creation date. Go to find.pcworld.com/15968 to download TDel, then unzip the file and follow the installation instructions. The program's automatic installation option won't work in Windows 2000, but don't let that bother you. Just copy tdel.exe to any convenient location and double-click it to finish the installation.

Automatic shortcuts: To create the batch file that will automatically add shortcuts to this menu, open Notepad or another text editor, and on the first line, type the command that will copy files from Windows' Recent menu to your new folder--for example, xcopy "c:\windows\recent\*.*" "c:\windows\Start Menu\More Docs" /d /y. Replace the first path in quotation marks ("c:\windows\recent\") with the path to your Recent folder, and change the second path in quotation marks ("c:\windows\Start Menu\More Docs") to point to the folder for your new menu. The /d switch copies your newest shortcuts from the Recent menu to your custom More Docs menu, while the /y switch suppresses prompts to overwrite files. The shortcut updates your custom menu when you launch it to show all shortcuts in your Recent folder, not just the last 15.

Unlike Windows' Documents menu, automatically adding shortcuts to this menu is easy. Add a line to the text file similar to the one above that copies specific shortcuts to your More Docs menu.

Shortcut removal: Add another line to this file to keep your menu size manageable. (TDel must be installed for this tip.)

Type del c:\windows\startm~1\moredo~1\*.* /days:3.. /d- and press Enter. Note that TDel does not support long file names, so your paths must use the abbreviated form (first 6 letters of a file name, minus spaces, followed by ~1, in most cases). Replace the path in this example with the one to your new More Docs folder. The /days: switch deletes files older than a specified number of days; change '3' to the number of days you prefer. Experiment to find the number of days that works best for you. Don't forget to add the two periods after the number to delete all files older than whatever length you specify. The /d- switch keeps the program from deleting the More Docs folder if it becomes empty. Finally, if you're using Windows 2000, replace del with tdel (and the path to the utility, if needed).

Final steps: In Notepad, choose File, Save As, navigate to a folder where you store batch files (the Windows folder will do), type a name such as "FixMenu.bat" (in Windows 9 x, Me, and XP) or "FixMenu.cmd" (in Windows 2000). Be sure to include the quotation marks so that Notepad doesn't add its .txt extension to the file name. Click Save and use Explorer to find the FixMenu file you just created. Choose it and click Edit, Copy, then navigate to your Start Menu\Programs\StartUp folder and choose Edit, Paste Shortcut. With the new shortcut selected, choose File, Properties. Click the Program tab (in Windows 9 x and Me) or the Shortcut tab (in Windows 2000 and XP) and choose Minimized from the Run drop-down list. In Windows 9 x and Me, make sure Close on exit is checked as well. If you have problems, come back later and change these settings to keep the DOS window open while you troubleshoot. That will let you read any error messages. Click OK.

Now Windows will update your menu and delete old items automatically whenever it starts. To update the menu within the current Windows session, choose Fix Menu from the Start menu, or use either Task Scheduler or the Scheduled Tasks folder to run the batch file more often. If you prefer your new menu to the old Documents menu, hide the old one by following the steps in "Take Charge of Your Runaway Start Menu" above.

Windows XP Professional Edition's Group Policy utility makes it easy to increase the size of the My Recent Documents menu. Choose Start, Run, type gpedit.msc, and press Enter to open Group Policy. In the left pane, select User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Windows Explorer. Double-click Maximum number of recent documents in the right pane and select Enabled under the Setting tab. Increase the maximum number of recent documents to a number above 15. The menu will show only the 10 most recent files of any file type--for example, 10 .doc (Word) files--an improvement, nevertheless.

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