Clear The Recent Document list in PowerPoint 2007 and 2003

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Thanks to PPT MVPs Michael Koerner (for the research and writeup) and Shyam Pillai (for additional suggestions)

Problem

In PowerPoint 2007 you can have up to 50 documents in the Most Recently Used (MRU) documents list. In earlier versions we were limited to 9, and eliminating them was not all that easy either.

Solution

In 2007 you have the option to pin a presentation. All that means is you can stop that presentation from being overwritten in the MRU when you open other PowerPoint presentations.

To clear the MRU list or remove only selected files in PowerPoint 2007, here are the steps to follow:

• Messing around in the registry when you don't know what you're doing can trash PowerPoint or your Windows installation. If that thought unsettles you, think very carefully about whether you want to proceed.
• Open Regedit (click on Start, Run, and type "regedit" then click "OK")
• In Regedit navigate to the following location: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\PowerPoint\File MRU
• Delete some or all of the entries to clear out what you don't want, close regedit.
• This procedure also works in Word2007 and Excel2007.

For PowerPoint 2003, use this key instead: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\PowerPoint\Recent File List

If you want to clear the MRU list completely, pinned and unpinned files both:

1. Click the Office Button then click PowerPoint Options then click Advanced
2. Set "Show this number of recent documents" to 0.
3. Click Ok.
4. Repeat steps 1 to 3. This time set the document number back to the original value.

In this case, if you have pinned any files to the MRU, they also get deleted when you set the MRU to "0"
If you set the MRU list to the number of files that you have pinned, close and re open then all you get are the pinned files. If you then change max number of files to a higher level, close and reopen PowerPoint all the unpinned files return.

If you're using an earlier version of PPT, you might want to try this approach:

Fill the MRU (Most Recently Used) list with bogus file names

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