Recent Documents


	I have always found the "documents" menu in Windows rather useless. For one thing, it seems a bit arbitrary in determining which "most recent" documents it has saved, and, for another, the 10 or so documents which it does save are really too few to be of much good. So, to be honest, when a reader suggested we take a look at Recent Documents, I approached the

program with something quite less than enthusiam. I was wrong. This is one of the most useful utilities I have seen in quite a while and is certainly a major enhancement to what Windows itself provides.
Perhaps I should start out by saying that I think I am like a lot of computer users in that I go from one things to another – do a little word processing, update a spreadsheet, surf the web, make some sort of something in PageMaker, zip over to PhotoShop to touch up a picture and then back to word processing.
In doing this, of course, I end up generating a lot of documents which are not always so easy to find again. Two weeks later, I cannot really remember what I called that darn spreadsheet. The long file

long file names help, but not always.
   This, of course, is where the recent documents function in Windows would be a great help. But most of the time the particular file I need is long gone.
   Enter Recent Documents. It saves just about everything for as long as you want. Even better, it saves in a variety of ways that make it really easy to find the document again.
   One of the most helpful of these views is illustrated above: "document type." I know the file was done in Word, but have no idea what I named it or where I stashed it. Well, with Recent Documents all I have to do is click on "Microsoft Word Documents" and all the word processing documents I have saved in the past month or so are displayed (you decide how long you want to "keep" these links.
   A very nice feature of the program is that you can also set up your own category views. Using this feature, you could create a category with all the kinds of bitmap files you might use – .tif, .bmp, jpg, .gif and so on. Very nice. And no guessing.
   Other views are by date, folder or, simply, all documents. And, for each category, you determine how long you want to keep the links or how many documents you want to have in the links list.
   Another excellent feature of Recent Documents is that it will also show files which you created and later deleted. No, it does not recover deleted files, but, at least, you will know the file was deleted. That can save you a lot of time when you're searching for something. Especially if it is not there.
   With one 8 and two 3 gig hard disks, I find myself using the file find tool often. However, since the advent of Recent Documents, it has become the utility of choice to look for things I cannot find pretty quickly. Saves time? You bet. Keeps you sane? Certainly.
   Its an excellent program that works quickly, efficently and does a fine job of it.
   Connect to the Recent Documents web site.