Hey, all. I have a question about the Recent Documents list in PowerPoint. I was opening up a presentation today from that list (this is generally how I open recently used docs), and there were a bunch of presentations on the list that I haven’t opened in years. They weren’t on the Recent Documents list before I went to lunch, and I come back and there’s a whole bunch of old presentations on that list? Can anyone give me some ideas or explanations on how this might have happened?
Did you change the setting in Options | Advanced, under Display that reads “Show this number of Recent Documents”?
Nope, it’s still set at the default (17). I’ve opened many, many more presentations than 17 in the time between when I last opened the ones that are on the list now and then, if that makes sense.
Hmm. Did you reconnect to a server recently that had them stored on there, so now they’re popping back up again in the list b/c the server is available? Not standard behavior, but I’m spitballing here. How about Word / XL? Same issue?
Good question (and exactly the kind of answer I’m looking for). But, no. We don’t have a server. My PC is a stand-alone unit. We’re only networked to a printer.
I checked Word and XL, too (and Publisher) and they aren’t having the same issue. It’s weird, I know. I’m just trying to see if anyone has an answer. Otherwise I’ll just chalk it up to the continuing weirdness in my office. We may have a poltergeist. Maybe I should call a priest. Or switch to incense and holy water instead of perfume.
A co-worker looking for a doc while you were away who had no clue what your filing system was?
A co-worker… or an IMF team!
Whoa! What does the International Monetary Fund want with my PowerPoints!!!
IMF were the cool dudes & dudettes on Mission: Impossible. Mission: Impossible - Wikipedia
A more serious answer: PP & the other Office apps store the list of recently opened docs in the registry in a kinda weird way. There’s a list of doc names and also a separate list of which doc name list entry goes in which order. Normal processing is to retrieve the order list and then riffle through that in sequence to look up & retrieve the doc names from the name list. Whenever a new doc is opened, it’s added to the name list if it’s not already there, and its entry in the order list is moved up to the top. Once you have opened enough docs the order list stops growing & is held at 10 or 17 or however many entries. But all the names you’ve ever opened are still in the name list.
If something trashes the order list, the app falls back to just retrieving the list of doc names in physical order. Which tends to be oldest first. And the order list is silently rebuilt from that & saved for next time. Some versions also filter out dead links to now deleted files while others don’t.
I’m gonna bet a glitch of some kind trashed the order list and you’re seeing it now after a rebuild followed by a couple of instances of you opening your current docs.
Cool. Is the registry for each application separate?