MS Word folder question

Factual Questions
1

Word 2003, XP Home.

What the heck is the My Recent Documents and the Recent folder (see dir structure below)? The Icon is not like a regular folder Icon, but looks like a sheet of paper with a clock overlaying it.

It looks like the folder holds a copy of all documents. Or is this just a pointer? It’s very, very strange.

For instance, if I create a doc called test1, and then delete it from everywhere on the computer, (by doing a search for it) and then try to create the document again, it asks me if I want to overwrite it(huh? It doesn’t exist, I deleted ALL copies of it). And WITHOUT saying ‘Yes overwrite’ the document magically reappears in three locations -

C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Recent
and
C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\Recent
and
C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\My Recent Documents

W.T.F?

I then created Test2. And save it and searched for it. It defaults to -

C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\Recent one copy. If I open it and save it again (no deleting this time), I get two copies -

C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Recent
and
C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\Recent

Is this some bizzaro MS Word setting? I’m trying to clean up my Mom’s computer, and back data up to an external drive, and there are duplicates of all kinds of shit.

2

Those are just shortcuts (pointers) to the original document. It’s kinda like the history in your browser.

Here’s instructions on how to clear it: Windows help & learning.

3

Thanks, I check that out.

4

Natch, that MS article leads me to a dead end. Once I hit Advanced, it just brings up a file manager. Properties under the Recent folder does not give a way to clear list.

I’m about ready to just delete them all in the file manager.

5

Gahh. Yeah, it looks like they are all just shortcuts or links. Just worring that there may be some actuall documents in there. I’m going try to sort by file type, but I think it will just see them all as .docs, and not Word file or short cut.