Three Ways to Easily Access Your Most Recent Documents and Files in Windows 8.x

Do you miss having the Start menu feature “Recent Items” that used to be present in Windows before Windows 8 removed the entire Start menu? A folder with shortcuts to recently opened files is still there in Windows 8.x but it isn’t obvious how to get to it. Here are three ways you can easily see your recent items the way you used to. Use the Run box 1. Open the Run box with the keyboard shortcut Winkey+R 2. Enter “shell:recent” (without quotes or spaces) 3. The folder listing all your recent items will open. The list can be quite long and may contain items that are not so recent. You may even want to delete some. See this previous tip for more discussion of managing this folder. Note that the contents of the Recent Items folder is different from the contents of the File Explorer entry “Recent Places”, which contains folders that have been visited rather than files. They often have quite different contents. Make a desktop shortcut to the folder “Recent Items” If you like to look at the contents of Recent Items on a frequent basis, you may want to create a shortcut on the desktop. 1. Right-click the desktop 2. In the context menu, choose “New” 3. Select “Shortcut” 4. In the box “Type the location of the item”, enter: %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\ 5. Click “Next” 6. Name the shortcut “Recent items” or name of your choice 7. Click “Finish” You can also pin this shortcut to the taskbar or place in some other convenient location. Add “Recent Items” to the Quick Access Menu The Quick Access Menu (also called Power User’s Menu) is another possible place to add an entry for Recent Items. This is the menu opened by the keyboard shortcut Winkey+X or in Windows 8.1 by right-clicking the blue icon in the lower left corner of the desktop. A previous tip described how to use the free utility “Win+X Menu Editor” to add items. http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-customize-windows-8-power-user-m enu-suit-yourself.htm The original article was for Windows 8 but the utility also works for Windows 8.1. Use the path %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\ Contrary to some articles on the Internet, you cannot simply add shortcuts to the folder that is used by the Quick Access Menu. For security reasons, Windows will not allow additions unless the shortcuts contain certain code. The utility “Win+X Menu Editor” takes care of that. And there you have it – three different ways for easy access to your recently opened files.]]>