Windows 7: How to exclude files and folders from "Recent" lists and jump lists

I have some sensitive material on my computer which I would not like others to see. So, I'd like to know how to exclude some folders and files from lists like recent items, jump lists, etc. Is it possible?

Welcome to Seven Forums Stawan. It's possible to turn off the recent items in the jumplists of specific programs. But it's a laborious process. I will describe it, but you'll have to do the legwork.

The Jump lists for each program are stored in

C:\Users\(User name)\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations

as automaticDestination-ms files with random names.


To figure out which file belongs to which program , you'll have to do some detective work.

For instance, you could open a video with your media player program.

Change the AutomaticDestinations folder into Detail view and Sort by Date Modified.

Only one or two of the files should be showing as modified in the past minute. One may be a list of recently viewed folders, the other should be your program.

Delete one of the files then try to open your program's jump list. If it is gone, you have the right file.

Once you have identified the right file, restore it from recycle bin and set the file properties to Read-only. This will disable the jump list for that file. You'll need to do this for all the programs you want to exclude from jump lists.

As you can see, this would be a long and lengthy process, you'd be better off creating a password protected user. Good luck. A Guy

Another way .... To not show anything in recent folder, and in jump list.

Right click on the taskbar, select properties. The taskbar and start menu properties window will appear. Now select the Start menu tab, uncheck the box shown in the snip.



But if the sensitive materials are videos, and usually opened with WMP, you are to clear WIM history, and disable WMP history. In WMP, Organize > Options > Privacy . In Privacy tab, uncheck all the four boxes in history part, and clear both the history and cache once.


Now you are done

Hey and thanks for the replies, however, they do not answer to my question exactly. I like the jump list feature and recent item lists, I'd just like to exclude a few folders and the files inside them - so that they would not appear in these lists. Is this possible without disabling the jump lists and recent item lists all together?

As you open those files and folders, they will be included in Jump Lists and recent items . You may run disk cleanup every time after opening them, it will remove those from recent list, but not from jump list .

Okay, too bad then. It isn't the end of the world, but it would have been nice to be able to do that. Thanks anyway.

Not sure you read my post correctly, it will indeed do what you wanted, only for the specific items you want, without disabling the feature all together. That's why I did not add the instructions to completely disable. A Guy

I think you described how to disable a jump list for a specific program, for example, VLC Media Player or Explorer's jump list (or that is what happened when I did what you told). I don't want to do that, I want the lists to work as they should, but just exclude a few folders and the files inside them from appearing on those lists.

OK, sorry I misunderstood. I believe that is too fine a control. A Guy

Here is a sort of a work around to clear jumplists selectively. It's still rather tedious but does get rid on the endless Right-click / Remove operations for an unknown period as the jumplists just keep bringing in another item as one is removed.
It does mean you have to review all the jumplists you want to keep though. Chances are there may not be too many of them.

1. In the jumplists you want to keep right click each item that is definitely useful to keep and select Pin to this list.
2. Right click on Start menu, uncheck the Store and Display items, Apply, recheck them, OK. This clears all the jumplists but not the pinned items.
3. Unpin the pinned items as you use the programs and they become recent or frequent back in the jumplist.

I used this because I found I really didn't want to keep many jumplist items for each program in the Start menu.

Now I wonder what the limit is on number of items in a jumplist?