How to update the items stored in the window's Previous Locations menu

Hello,

I'm sure this has been asked many times before, but I cannot find a satisfactory answer to my problem, despite many searches. The mysterious 'previous locations' at the top of a window seems like it should be very useful:



But, in common with many other users out there, my system only displays these same, useless few folders which I haven't accessed in months. The double-arrow thing to the right - which looks like some kind of 'update' function - seemingly does absolutely nothing. I have, therefore, completely ignored this. But I'd LOVE to have quick access to my recent stuff - I know there's the sub-menu from the Start menu, but this is no use when I'm saving a file (unless there was a way to force the file selector dialog box to jump to a location that's already open in an Explorer window on the desktop, like on a Mac).

I found what should have been a useful link on Microsoft's site, but it's broken:

Microsoft Community

On a similar note, why does the search box sometimes appear and sometimes not appear in the top-right corner? There seems to be no logic to its behaviour.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Paul

I tried all that earlier today, but that only affects the Recent Items submenu in the Start menu, and does not affect the Previous Locations menu at all.

I just found this:
Windows Explorer's Address Bar dropdown list of previous folders - Microsoft Community
and did as it suggested - rebuilding the index. It's taking a while...I will report back on whether or not it fixes anything!

Nope. Indexing complete...exactly the same old folders in the Previous Locations dropdown.

Huh! That's weird - I tried exactly that earlier today, and it achieved nothing. So I thought I'd try it again - and voila! Sorted!

The mysteries and lack of logic in operating systems.....

Thanks,

Paul

Having successfully emptied out the junk from the Previous Locations menu, how do I get stuff back in there? Logic would suggest that it should auto-populate with the most recently used folders, but as we all know, computers do not rely on logic.

Despite having used the computer all day for the past 5 days since I cleared that menu out, it only contains one item. Any suggestions on how to get useful, recent stuff into there would be greatly appreciated.

The (seemingly unrelated) 'Store and display recently opened items in the Start menu and the taskbar' option in the start menu is ON.