Documents (pictures) in Recent Items issues

My machine is a 2009 MacBook Air with Lion (10.7.3) and I just noticed recently that I can still open the JPG files in Recent Items even though I have already deleted those JPG files. (When I click on the file name from Recent Items menu, Preview still opens the JPG file)
Does this have to do with Lion's Auto Save & Versions? I have tried to search for the file, but I can't find where the file location is. Is there a way to delete pictures completely?
I have searched for solutions, but I couldn't find answers directly to my issue. Can anyone help me out? Thanks in advance!

Thank you so much for the help!
Going by your solution, I was able to find the file location.
I found out it's not because of the Auto Save & Versions, it is actually because of Messages (iMessage). I received these pictures on my Messages and I guess the app automatically saves the pictures in the Messages folder when you receive picture files.

Similar Messages

Documents (picture files) in Recent Items issues

My machine is a 2009 MacBook Air with Lion (10.7.3) and I just noticed recently that I can still open the JPG files in Recent Items even though I have already deleted those JPG files. (When I click on the file name from Recent Items menu, Preview still opens the JPG file)
Does this have to do with Lion's Auto Save & Versions? I have tried to search for the file, but I can't find where the file location is. Is there a way to delete pictures completely?
I have searched for solutions, but I couldn't find answers directly to my issue. Can anyone help me out? Thanks in advance!

Thank you so much for the help!
Going by your solution, I was able to find the file location.
I found out it's not because of the Auto Save & Versions, it is actually because of Messages (iMessage). I received these pictures on my Messages and I guess the app automatically saves the pictures in the Messages folder when you receive picture files.

How do I remove "Recent Items" Documents from the apple menu?

I've been searching for an answer to this question for the better part of 3 hours now. W
Several iterations of osx ago, there was the ability to separately limit how many recent items were shown for Applications, Documents and Servers. Over the years, I simply installed a newer version of osx on top, and surprisingly my recent items always eliminated the Documents from the list.
I've since done a clean install of mavericks after installing an SSD, and i've lost this small but important part of my work flow. No matter what I've tried to remove the documents from Recent Items, it always shows up. I can still boot into my old HDD (which is now installed as a supplementary drive and also updated and running mavericks 10.9.2), and see from clicking on the Apple Menu > Recent Items that it only displays Applications and Servers.
Try as hard as I can, I can't simply figure out how to remove the documents from the recent items menu. I've tried editing the com.apple.recentitems.plist file, to show 0 items for documnets, but this never seems to work. (I've since read that this file is simply rewritten on logout.) Strangely, if I go into the old setup System Preferences, Recent Items: it is showing as None. I also suspect that maybe I used Tinker Tools or some other utility to change some command line preference (using the gui) several years back. Not sure how I could investigate what would need to be done to compare files or otherwise figure out how to remove the documents section from the recent items menu.
It's starting to drive me crazy. Anyone?

The Apple menu is at the top left hand corner of your screen, click on it and about this Mac is the first choice.
Click twice on Version to get serial number.

Recent Item option missing

Running CS4 and do not see the option for Recent Items in the File drop down. I've expanded it so that's not it. I checked preferences and the place where you can see how many files to display in recent is grayed out and says ZERO. I'm not sure how that happened but would love someone to tell me how to fix it. I have a screen capture if that'd help.
Thanks,
Sheila

Well I'm not seeing what to change in TweakUI. Must I completely uninstall it?
This problem in InD may or may not be related to my larger Vista Recent Items issue. There is apparently a design flaw in Vista's Recent Items issue. It lists recent items alphabetically rather than most recently used. I found that so unhelpful I disabled it a long time ago. I've been trying to get it back this morning to see if that fixes the InD issue. But I can't do it. Something's messed up. In TaskBar StartMenu Privacy there should be TWO options, one to display recent files and another to display recent programs. The one for recent files isn't there at all. There's a gap where it should be. And I can't get the recent programs check box to stick. After checking it I go into start menu customize to be sure there's a number of files listed and there is. But I apply and OK and when I go back it's still unchecked. I have a free tech support call for MS which I think I'll use for this.

Clear recent items is broken in 10.8 (major privacy issue!)

Clearing recent items is now completely broken under Mountain Lion.
Try this experiment:
1. Open an image in Preview.app.
2. File > Open Recent > Clear Menu
So is it gone now? No!!! They are not gone. You can still see what somebody previous viewed in that app by going to one of 2 places:
1. Right-click the app's icon in the Dock and recent items are ALWAYS there, never cleared.
2. Use Mission Control to view Application Windows and you still see recent items at the bottom of your screen.
Previously in Lion, this occured, but there was a workaround that involved clearing recent items, quitting the app, then relaunching the app, then the recent stuff wouldn't be visible anywhere. This workaround no longer works.
If you need to be guarenteed privacy with certain images like confidential bussiness documents, any embaressing photos or dirty pictures, do NOT upgrade to Mountain Lion because it will show those to anyone who happens to be nearby when you use Expose / Mission Control and you will not be able to work around it anymore.
If by chance this is not a bug and was intended behavior, tell Apple to stop it (or find yourself a new operating sytem that doesn't violate privacy.)

First, in response to Adrian Clarke's suggesetion of clearing the system-wide recents and that didn't work for me, but thanks.
Regardless, I think I found a permenant solution for Preview (but not TextEdit).
1. Go into ~/Library/Preferences
2. Search the folder for the phrase "Preview"
3. The first time I did the search, I found 3 or 4 things related to Apple's Preview application. I deleted them all.
4. Go to Terminal and type "killall Dock"
NOTE: Under Mountain Lion it appears (to me at least) the old "killall Dock" command does not always make the Dock relaunch automatically as it did in previous versions of OS X, so you might have to logout/login as well.
Going back to look at them again hours later, not all the files have rebounded or been recreated. So I can't tell you all their names exactly. I can only tell you the names of the files that get remade, which again isn't all the files that I deleted.
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.preview.LSSharedFileList.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Preview.SandboxedPersistentURLs.LSSharedFileList .plist
Again, the paths of the other files are lost since I didn't note them before deleting them, but just search your Preferences folder for "Preview".
Now TextEdit was exhibiting the same undesierable behavior as well, so I tried doing the same for TextEdit: Search preferences and deleting anything related to it.
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.LSSharedFileList.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.LSSharedFileList.plist.lockfile
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.plist.L2YUl2h
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.plist.lockfile
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.SandboxedPersistentURLs.LSSharedFileLis t.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.SandboxedPersistentURLs.LSSharedFileLis t.plist.lockfile
After deleting them all and using TextEdit for a bit, the only files that rebounded were:
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.LSSharedFileList.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TextEdit.SandboxedPersistentURLs.LSSharedFileLis t.plist
But does it work on TextEdit? Sorta but not really. It works until you perform a reboot, then the old problem returns, afflicting TextEdit again. But Preview continues to behave correctly after a reboot. Why these results are so inconsitent is truly confusing. I suspect there's a bug (or multiple bugs). If anybody can offer a solution for TextEdit, I'd be very appreciative. In the meantime, if this bug affects you, maybe consider switching from TextEdit to another app until this gets fixed.

Getting "open recent" items and "open documents" from an application

How do I ask Textedit (if running) for the list of documents currently open?
How do I ask Textedit (if running ) for the list of "open recent" items?
Thank you

Thank you. This does the job for "opened documents" in TextEdit and other applications. I wish there were a similar method for "open recent" items. Each application (TextEdit, BBEdit etc) seems to handle the "open recent" items in its own way!
Thank you again.

WORD document not showing up in Apple Recent Items Documents

I work on a certain WORD document every day, maybe serveral times a day. I edit it each time, making numerous cuts, copies, pastes and saves. I remember when I first got the computer, it would show up in my Apple list of recent documents and as such was handy when I relaunched it every day. Now it isn't showing up there at all. WORD will be listed as a recent application but not the document itself. I have to access it by first launching WORD, not by clicking on it in the Apple menu as I did before. I have "Number of recent items" in the System Preferences set to 15 documents. I tried saving this document with another name to see if that would work. It didn't. Then I thought maybe there was a glitch in the particular WORD document so I opened a new one, typed a line, saved it, quit the program and then looked under the Apple menu. It was not there either. So, is this a problem with some kind of WORD preference setting or with my computer? I've recently repaired my permissions and verified my disk and there appear to be no problems.

OK, I may have resolved this but not in a way that I like. If I put the document in the "Documents" folder in my User folder then it shows up. But I prefer to organize my stuff in my own way, make my own folders and put them where I want to, as I did with system 9. Is this not possible on OSX? It's going to be a disorganized hodge-podge if I have to do it the way it seems to be set up to do - stuff is going to be all over the place and I will not feel in control over anything. What also doesn't make sense it that the Apple menu lists other items in recent "documents" that are not in the home user>documents folder at all. One is something from User>Sites and the other is the Appearance.prefPane.

Recent Items: Documents Some never show up

One thing that annoys me no end is that spreadsheets I open frequently, only intermittently show up in the Recent Items: Documents list and some never show up.
Any ideas? Besides dumping Microsoft Office 2008.
Thanks.

Nope, sorry, that’s all history now, I could not see that the next day.
I wanted to submit a question, but it
Did not show up Sept 01, 08:51:
http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/0e00d94b-32a6-444f-aef1-b0b112200693/where-to-go-when-a-forum-is-not-maintained?forum=whatforum
Then I wrote and it did not show up (10:08):
http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/cdba1ec7-8567-47a9-a7fb-0461e2162d30/some-threads-will-never-show-up?forum=reportabug
So I wrote a posting to the existing thread (10:12):
http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/aa1c84f1-84fe-4b40-9b7b-7948d733ceda/forum-page-not-updating-again?forum=reportabug
checked and tried again, nada, posted again (10:28) there and left
(without noticing that at 10:26 Dave Patrick replied to my first question / thread that did not show up).
Again, that’s all gone now.
Only that my first mentioned thread is still open,
I could not email fissues at …
and the postmaster rejects email because of “possibly mail loop”,
and the ICE forum is still dead.
So, um, … ?

'recent items' isn't storing word and excel documents

I just purchased a new iMac running Yosemite. Under the apple, recent items, the items stored are only various types of images (.jpg, screenshot). No documents from Word or Excel are listed. How can I get 'recent items' to list the Word or Excel I haveopened recently
royfrommill valley

You need to open them in Office 2008 or newer, LibreOffice, Pages/Numbers, or similar software.
(121899)

In 10.10 the "recent documents" pulldown does not display actual recent items--it shows the same items time after time. How can I fix that?

In previous versions of OS 10, the "recent items" pull down from the Apple icon (top left) actually showed recent items. In this version, 10.10, the same items display time after time rather than displaying recent items. How can this be fixed?

Back up all data before proceeding.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.corerecents.recentsd
Right-click or control-click the line and select
Services ▹ Reveal in Finder (or just Reveal)
from the contextual menu.* A folder should open with an item selected. Move the selected item to the Trash. Log out or restart the computer and test.
*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. In the Finder, select
Go ▹ Go to Folder...
from the menu bar and paste into the box that opens by pressing command-V. You won't see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.

Lost Recent items list in FW

I successfully upgraded FW to 11.1.0.205 some time ago (when I upgraded CS5 to CS5.5), but I've been experiencing a couple strange behaviors ever since. I'm on a pc using Vista.
(1) FW now requires admin permission whenever I launch it. No other program in the suite does that. It's an annoyance that I can live with, but would rather not have to click CONTINUE every time. I tried setting the program to run as Administrator, but it made no difference.
(2) The most annoying issue is that 'Open a Recent item' list is empty every time. Oh it retains my list if i don't shut off my computer. But if I do shut down my computer, FW's recent item list is empty at the next launch. I used to use this feature a lot for picking up where I left off the day before. Now I have to not only search for the document, but also seek the drive and folder since that information is not retained either.
Is there a solution to either of these problems? Maybe they are related.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.

AFAIK, it's the norm. Recent documents only displays ones previously opened, not their current status or whether they still exist.

Recent items tab is locked

I changed users on my ibook. I imported the appleworks preferences and user data from the old user to the new.
Now when I open Appleworks the Recent Items tab in Starting points has a paddle lock icon. I assume that I cannot add or delete items to this Tab. Any way to unlock it?
The other problem I'm having in the new user account is that I cannot save a document anyplace in the new user window. When I try to save a new document to the desktop, I get an error message that says volume not found.
I can save just fine in my administrator account and its recent items tab has no lock icon.
All suggestions appreciated.
Waring

Hi Waring,
Welcome to Apple Discussions and the AppleWorks forum.
This is probably a permissions issue—your current User account doesn't have read-write permission for the folder holding Recent Items.
In the Finder, go to HD > username > Documents > Appleworks User Data > Starting Points > Recent Items.
Click on the folder, then press command-I to Get Info.
Show Details in the Owner and Permissions section of the Get Info window, then set all three menus to Read and Write. This may require an admin password, or may need to be done from your Admin account.
Regards,
Barry

Prevent .ichat files in Recent Items

Hey all...
Just started using iChat over Adium. So far, so good... but I'm noticing in my "recent items" (under Apple menu), it's filled up with .ichat files.
Is there a way to preclude .ichat files from showing up in Recent Items? I rarely need to go back to a particular chat, but often need to reopen a recent application file.
Thanks!
Charlie

Hi,
There is nothing in iChat that controls this.
Where does Adium keep saved Chats ?
iChat keeps them in a folder called iChats in the Users Document folder (Hard Drive/Users/(your account/little house icon)/Documents/iChats) by default.
If Adium does not keep them in Documents (even in a sub folder) then it may pay to change the iChat Location.
I have not tried to change the location in iChat for some time as it did not work that well in iChat 2 and 3.
It is set in iChat Menu > Preferences > Messages and the "Save Chats Automatically To (Drop Down)"
I just tried this in iChat 4 using the "Other" Option in that Drop down that lets you navigate away from the Documents folder and Create a new folder if required.
I created a new one on the Desktop (Called iChatDesktop to prevent naming issues).
However this still put them in the Recent Items list of the Finder
I had thought the Appearance Settings effected apps as well as th Finder > Recent Items lists
But reducing the System Preferences > Appearance to 5 Documents only reduced the Finder's list and not iChat's own list - even with a restart of iChat.
(On Checking I may have done that with Tinker Tool)
Tinker Tool does not offer any exclusion list either under the Finder or General sections/icons/tabs.
7:52 PM Tuesday; February 8, 2011
Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

Clear Recent Items from the Dock

When I right click on Preview on the Dock, it shows a list of recently opened files. A friend of mine needs to remove those for some reason..... He tried clicking File>Recent Items>Clear Menu and clicking the Apple Icon>Recent Items>Clear Menu and restarting Preview. This removes Recent Items from the Menu Bar but not from the Dock. Another problem is the last picture that thats open appears when Preview is started. Is it possible to disable this or preferably the entire "Resume" feature of Lion?

macridah wrote:
This also happened to me and I was going crazy because the items might of been deleted or from a DVD that is no longer mounted. So this is how I solved it.
To summarize, you need to delete or rename some files in your local "Library" directory, ie ~/Library/Preferences directory.
For the iWork apps and Preview. Rename these following files with a "~" in the beginning or delete it or to be safe, copy to another location:
"com.apple.iWork.Keynote.LSSharedFileList.plist" to "~com.apple.iWork.Keynote.LSSharedFileList.plist"
do the same for these files
com.apple.iWork.Numbers.LSSharedFileList.plist
com.apple.iWork.Pages.LSSharedFileList.plist
com.apple.Preview.LSSharedFileList.plist
One way to do it through the GUI is open finder, go to the "Go" menu and press the "option" button.
Choose the Library menu item and open the "Preferences" directory.
Look for the files mentioned above either rename, delete, or move.
Close the application and see if the recent items still appear when you right mouse click the icon in the Dock.
If that doesn't work, then logout and log back in.
Hope this helps or solves your issue.
I just used this to delete the recenttly opened items on Quicktime that appeared on the dock even though the 'Recently Opened' folder frm the Menu was empty. It worked like a charm.
Now I still need to quit the Application after deleting the 'Recently Opened' on the Menu bar in order to make the dock recently opened disappear as well, but it works!

Microsoft Office 2011 "Recent Items"

On my new iMac 27" (late 2013, according to the System Info, although delivered in late October 2014; 32 gigs of RAM) running OS X Yosemite v 10.10 all the Microsoft Office 2011 apps run fine and the apps show up in Recent Items under the Apple menu, but no MS Office documents do. Documents created in all other apps do appear in Recent Items, including a couple of Word and Excel files opened, renamed, and saved using Pages and Numbers, respectively.
I spent about an hour on the phone with an Apple Care rep and a supervisor/specialist, neither of whom could figure out what was going on. As recommended, I reinstalled Yosemite (no help), and on my own deleted and reinstalled Office 2011, going through all the online updates. Again, no change.
I trashed the plist for Recent Items (no help) and then removed the recentitems.plist.lockfile, which was there to the surprise of the specialist. From what I have read, its function is to keep the system from getting confused or overloaded if two programs are trying to write to the plist at the same time. A new recentitems.plist.lockfile was not created after I took it out of the Library/Preferences folder.
I really don't want to do a clean install an d
Any thoughts? This is not a critical flaw, but it is annoying.

It seems to be an open issue for Yosemite. There is a workaround though:
Recent items no longer creating links for recently opened word/excel documents

Documents (pictures) in Recent Items issues

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for