Reference number: CH000135

Making applications that are viewed not go to My Documents or Documents.

Issue:

Making applications which are viewed not go to My Documents or Documents.

Cause:

To make commonly accessed files more easy to access, Microsoft has created the My Documents (or Documents) folder that  allows the user to quickly run commonly accessed files. Some users may prefer to not have these automatically go into the My Documents folder or Documents for privacy reasons..

Solution:

Windows XP users

SafeXP

Using a third-party program such as SafeXP will enable you to not only remove My Documents from the start menu but provides you with other features to help keep your privacy secure. See our Windows 98, Windows ME, and Windows 2000 download pages for a download to this utility.

Microsoft Windows 98, Windows ME, and Windows 2000

SafeXP

Using a third-party program such as SafeXP will enable you to not only remove My Documents from the start menu but provides you with other features to help keep your privacy secure. See our Windows 98, Windows ME, and Windows 2000 download pages for a download to this utility.

TweakUI solution

Microsoft Windows 98, Windows ME, and Windows 2000 users can use TweakUI to clear document history at login by opening TweakUI from the Control Panel, clicking the Paranoia tab, and checking "Clear Document history at logon."

Microsoft Windows 95 users

Note: The below steps requires the user to edit the registry. Please review over our Registry Section to familiarize yourself with the potential issues.

1. Click Start / Run / type regedit and click ok
2. Go to the below registry key:
   
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\
   SOFTWARE\
   MICROSOFT\
   Windows\
   CURRENTVERSION\
   EXPLORER\
   SHELLFOLDERS\

Once in this key, go into the recent section and change the value from c:\windows\recent to c:\recycled and click OK. This will take all the documents to the recycle bin. Unfortunately, it can be a burden having to delete these each day; therefore, you may want to review our section on how to make files not be stored in the Recycle Bin. See document CH000134 for additional information.

Additional information:

• Additional information about how to manually clear the My Documents or Documents items can be found on document CH000661.