Clearing the File>Open recent menu

[coreywilliams@adobeforums.com]

Does anyone know of a way to clear the File>Open Recent Menu?

[Ed_Hannigan@adobeforums.com]

I'm not gonna do this on my machine but I bet if you set it to 0 in Preferences, that will clear it. Then you can reset to some other nmber later.

[jonf@adobeforums.com]

Oddly, that doesn't work.

[Ann_Shelbourne@adobeforums.com]

I imagine that trashing your Photoshop prefs., including plist, would do it but I am not prepared to try it myself to see!

[Graham_Phillips@adobeforums.com]

Unfortunately it looks like they are in the Adobe Photoshop CS Settings/Adobe Photoshop CS Prefs.psp file. You don't really want to trash that file.

[Ed_Hannigan@adobeforums.com]

I just set it to zero ands Quit, restarted and the menu item was grayed, indicating it's cleared I think. You have to restart Photoshop to make it take effect.

[jonf@adobeforums.com]

Setting it to zero will gray it out (even without re-starting). But try resetting it to any number. Everything shows up again. So you haven't really cleared it.

Why do you need to clear it? If you want the data gone, that doesn't do the trick. If all you want is to have the menu clear, just keep it set to 0.

[Ed_Hannigan@adobeforums.com]

Oops! If you set it to any number afterward it brings them back!

[Ramón_G_Castañeda@adobeforums.com]

Try doing a Find on the exact name of any of the files that show up as "Recent Files". (I'm not at the Mac right now so I can't do it myself at this time.) My guess is that you'll not only find the original document but most likely also an alias in some obscure folder. That's how many applications keep track of recent items and recent applications. If you do find such an alias, navigate to the folder where it resides and, if this theory applies (I'm too new to Panther to say for certain), you'll also find aliases of other recent documents. Trash them [the aliases] (or at least take them out of that folder) and the menu will be cleared.

I'll try it myself when I get back home this evening.

[Ann_Shelbourne@adobeforums.com]

This might be the one?
com.apple.recentitems.plist

But it might wipe all lists in all applications!

[graffiti]

I believe that only clears the items in Finder's recent items list.

[Ramón_G_Castañeda@adobeforums.com]

Well, so much for my theory about programs keeping track of recent items by means of aliases. It looks that's not the case in Panther, though several applications use that trick in OS 9.x. I've searched for aliases of the files appearing in the Open Recent menu item and found none. I even searched when booted straight into native 9.2.2 and searched for invisible files with that name on the OS drive, but nothing comes up.

[Doug_Katz@adobeforums.com]

Your theory is still correct, Señor. OSX versions of Appleworks and FreeHand use the alias technique.