Windows

Change Number Of Recent Items On Vista's Start Menu

Posted by on Oct 23, 2007 | 4 Comments

Like previous versions of Windows, Vista displays a list of recently opened items directly off the Start menu. By default, a maximum of ten items are shown but this number can be increased by making a small change to the registry.

To increase the number of recent items on the Start menu:

  1. Click Start, type Registry Editor in the Search field and press Enter.
  2. Click the Registry Editor icon.
  3. Navigate to the following key:
    HEKY_CURRENT_USERS\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
  4. Add a new DWORD value called ‘MaxRecentDocs’.
  5. Double click the new value. Change from Base to Decimal.
  6. Enter is the appropriate number in the Value data field. For example, enter 20 to increase the number of recent documents to 20.
  7. Close the Registry Editor.

[tags]vista, windows, vista tips, vista help[/tags]

  • Mark

    Isn’t that the same settings as:
    1) Right-click Windows Start-Menu-”Ball”
    2) Select Properties
    3) Go to tab “Start Menu”
    4) Select “Customize”
    5) Under “Start Menu Size” set the “Number of recent programs to display”
    6) Click OK
    7) Click OK

    Mark

  • https://www.smartestcomputing.us.com Broni

    It doesn’t work for me either way on Home Premium.
    With, or without registry key, I have 15 items displayed.
    At Start>Properties, the number was originally set to 9, but switching to 20, doesn’t change anything, either.
    Hmmmm.

  • cplloyd

    I tried implementing this mod in Vista Business. Here are a few observations:

    1) The Explorer key under Policies did not exist so I had to create it first.
    2) Adding the MaxRecentDocs value to this new key appears to work. However, in testing it I found that the maximum number of a particular type of documents is still limited to 10, ie you can see only 10 .txt, .doc, etc files at any one time.
    3) I found that, whereas XP Pro kept a list of previous documents ad infinitum in a user’s Recent folder, Vista keeps truncating the list to 10 items of each type in AppsData\Roaming\…\Recent Items, ie the Recent Items list and the Recent Items folder are in total sync. I haven’t yet tested whether it also truncates the list to the value of MaxRecentDocs.

    Is anyone aware how you can stop this 10 limit on each document type and possibly the deletion of older documents beyond the MaxRecentDocs setting?

    Paul.

  • chaldean

    i don’t want windows to store my recently viewed items anywhere at all. That means not even in windows/roaming directory. Even files that i viewed from a usb drive are stored on hard drive while unwanted and private!