Expert: Amy - 11/24/2004

Question
Sometimes I don't want the most recently used items listed in my file menu (Open Recent Files)in Illustrator or any other program. Do you know how I can disable this feature within the program or where in windows I can find the folder that holds this information to delete it when I want to. I know how to remove and disable recently opened documents for the start menu, but I need to know how to stop my graphic programs from displaying them.

Answer
Hi Sharena.

Sorry for the delay in answering this question, but I've been researching it a little.

Seems you are not the only one who would like to be able to control this - Windows NT people experience major slow-downs while Illustrator tries to build/break the paths involved, from what I read.

Adobe applications control their recent files lists with an entry line in their prefs files.  If you open the 'aiprefs' file with an editor, you'll see a line in there referring to MaxRecentFiles.  It's set to 10 by default.  The minimum valid value is 1.

I found an entry in alt.graphics.illustrator from Paul Asente (who is an Illustrator guru) that implies that you're stuck with the list, basically, unless you delete the aiprefs file every time you're done using illustrator.

How disappointing... and he would know.

I also looked for a plug-in or an action that would clear this list for you, but I found nothing.

In other applications you can control the number of recent files displayed...usually in preferences, so please look there in your other programs.

I hope you can learn to live with it.  Maybe you can create 10 dummy files and keep them in your Illustrator folder, then write an action that opens and closes all those files and in doing so clears the confidential files out of your list?????

If you need help doing that, let me know.

Good luck
Amy Pace