You can customize the Start Menu in Windows 7 to show the Recent Documents as explained in this article. By default, Windows only shows last ten documents you worked on. If you want to increase this limit, you can make few changes and increase it to more than ten. Here is how :
Method 1 :
- Press the key combination Windows Key + R to open the Run dialog. Type gpedit.msc in the Run dialog and press Enter.
- In the Group Policies Editor, navigate to User Configuration → Administrative Templates → Windows Components → Windows Explorer in the left side treeview.
- In the right hand side pane, you will find a value Maximum number of recent documents. Double click on it. Choose Enabled and set maximum number of recent items to whataver you like, for example, 25.
- Click OK to save the settings and close the dialog.
Method 2 :
- Press the key combination Windows Key + R to open the Run dialog. Type regedit in the Run dialog and press Enter. This would open the Windows Registry Editor.
- In the Registry Editor navigate to the following key,
HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPoliciesExplorer
If the subkey Explorer does not exist, then create it.
- Right click in the right hand side pane, and select New → DWORD (32-bit) Value. Give the name to the new value as MaxRecentDocs.
- Double click on MaxRecentDocs and change the value to whatever number you want. This is the maximum number of recent document which would appear in the Start Menu.