View List of Recent Files in Windows 7

Whenever you open a file using the Open dialog box or by double-clicking on it in Windows Explorer, it is recorded in the Windows Recent folder or the Windows Registry. If you want to know which files you recently accessed then you can use the RecentFilesView from Nir Sofer. This utility display the list of all recently opened files, and allows you to delete unwanted filename entries. You can also save the files list into a text, html or xml file.

You can download the tool from http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/recentfilesview.zip. The download is merely a 37 KB and takes a fraction of second to download. This is completely portable application and does not require any extra files or installation to run. Decompress the files of the ZIP archive to a folder and double-click on RecentFilesView.exe.

View List of Recent Files in Windows

As the program loads, it searches for all the recently opened files in your Recent folder as well as the Registry. Both the locations are searched for only the currently logged in user. A list of the recently opened files with all other information is displayed in a easy to use manner.

View List of Recent Files in Windows

To open a file from the list, just double-click on it. To delete an item from the Recent files history on your computer, click on it to select it and then press the Del key on your keyboard. You can also create an HTML report for all the entries by selecting View → HTML Report – All Items. You can see many more options by right-clicking on a item in the list.

If you are wondering – “Where did I save that file?” and looking for it all over your hard disk like crazy, then RecentFilesView can really save your day. Also if you do not want anyone to view what files you were working on and enhance your privacy then the RecentFilesView tool can help you remove those entries. This is an excellent tool for speeding up your daily computing life.