An Overview of Recent Documents

On this Page

   Part of Windows Explorer

   Accessing Recent Documents

   System Folders

   Virtual Folders

   Common Windows Dialogs

   Try It!

1. It is not possible to customize which documents are listed, how they are listed or how many documents should be retained for future reference.
2. You cannot age the documents, allowing documents that were referenced more than x days ago to be ignored.
3. It is very difficult to remove a document from the menu if you don't want it there.
4. If you access two documents that have the same file name, but reside in different folders, only the last document referenced will be stored.
5. The "My Recent Documents" Menu ignores folder names!
6. You can’t group documents into specified categories of document.

These "features" of the "My Recent Documents" Menu, relegate this (should be) useful feature of Windows to another one of those "it's there, but I don't use it" tools. So what's the answer... "X2Net Recent Documents" of course!

Part of Windows Explorer

Recent Documents is built into Windows Explorer and appears under My Computer as a ""disk drive" called "X2Net Recent Documents". As it is part of Windows Explorer, access to recent documents is handled exactly as if you were accessing normal files in Explorer, i.e., the icon views, detail views, properties and navigation is all as Explorer. You even have folders (System and Virtual) to group your documents into different views.
 

Screenshot showing Recent Documents within Windows Explorer  View a larger image...

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Accessing Recent Documents

There are four quick and easy ways to access X2Net Recent Documents.

From within Windows Explorer
As shown above, whenever you open Windows Explorer (or "My Computer") you can quickly access Recent Documents

From the "My Recent Documents" menu item on the Windows Start Menu.

Each item on this menu opens a different System Folder view of your documents, allowing quick and easy access to your documents.

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From the System Tray Icon

When X2Net Recent Documents is installed, an icon is placed in your Windows System Tray. This allows quick access to Recent Documents simply by clicking this icon with your mouse.

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From within Windows Dialogs

As detailed below, Recent Documents can be accessed from the Windows Common Dialogs (for example, the OPEN dialog). However, not all applications use these Common Dialogs. When using a non-Common dialog, you can still access Recent Documents by browsing to X2Net Recent Documents using the "Look in:" drop-down list found on application dialogs.  This provide a quick and easy way to browse your recent documents directly from within the dialog.

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System Folders

X2Net Recent Documents uses two types of folders, System folders and Virtual folders.

System Folders are folders that have a pre-defined function in X2Net Documents and there are 3 System Folders defined.

• By Application: This folder breaks the items down by their host application, so you can jump to view the recently accessed Word Documents (for example). The UI presents this as a number of sub-Folders under the "By Application" folder; with a folder for each Application.
• By Date: This folder breaks the items down by the Date they were accessed, again showing the groupings as sub-folders; with labels such as "Today", "Yesterday", "Last Week", "Two Weeks Ago", etc.
• Latest Documents: This folder displays the last 30 (by default) documents you have accessed.

System Folders can be configured via their Properties Screen to change what they display. However, they cannot be deleted or renamed.

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Virtual Folders

The other type of folder found in X2Net Recent Documents, is a Virtual folder.

Two virtual folders are created by default "My Recent Pictures" and "My Recent Music" (showing any picture files or music files you have recently opened). To change the "filters" or "rules" being applied to any folder (System or Virtual) simply display the folders Properties (in the same way as when accessing the Properties for normal file-system folders and files in Windows Explorer) and change the settings as required.

As the number of document references stored within X2Net Recent Documents grows, you may wish to create your own Virtual folders to group certain types of documents together into document Virtual Folders.

For example, by creating a Virtual Folder called Clients and then creating a sub-Virtual Folder for each client within the Clients Folder, you can group documents relating to a client in that client's own Virtual Folder. Whenever you wanted to quickly recall a document for a client, you could just open the Client's Virtual Folder in X2Net Recent Documents and all the documents for that Client will be displayed, regardless of where they are stored on your computer.

Virtual Folders work in the same way as Folders (or directories) on your computer work. They can be created, browsed, renamed and deleted in the same way, however they do not actually store any physical document, only references to documents you have accessed.

Virtual Folders can display any document references stored by X2Net Recent Documents and a document reference can be displayed in any number of Virtual Folders.

For example: Using the above Clients example.

Say you have a client called Acme Inc. and have created a Virtual Folder for Acme Inc which has a Folder Rule setup for "Include Where Document Name Matches "Acme" (see Using Folder Rules for more information). This will allow any ACME document accessed to be listed in the Acme Inc. Virtual Folder.

However, you may also want to group any Account documents into an Accounts Virtual Folder, so you setup a Folder Rule for "Include Where Document Name Matches "Accounts".

When you open a Document called "Acme End Year Accounts.doc" it will not only show in the Acme Inc. Virtual Folder (as it contains ACME) but it will also show in the Accounts Virtual Folder (as it contains ACCOUNTS) as the document name matched the rules for both folders.

As you can see, using Virtual Folders you can quickly build a very comprehensive cross-filing capability for your document references, allowing you to quickly locate any of your documents.

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Common Window Dialogs

How many times have you gone to open a document in your Word Processor application, only to forget where you saved a document. Was it in your Letters folder or was it in the Clients folder?

Now you can quickly access your documents with a single click on the mouse to open the X2Net Recent Documents directly in the Windows Open dialog. This then allows you to browse to any folder in Recent Documents and locate the file you want. For example, you are after that Acme Inc. letter. Browse to the Clients folder and then open the Acme Inc folder and you will find you document. Or you know you last used that document last Monday, browse to the By Date folder and open the Last Monday folder.  Easy!

Example browsing Recent Documents using the Common Open Dialog. In this example documents accessed the previous Tuesday are displayed and can be opened directly from the dialog. View a larger image...

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Try It!

The easiest way to explain how it all works, is to actually install and run the application. Once installed and run for the first time, you will be able to access the application from within Windows Explorer (under My Computer), via the Icon in the Windows System Tray or via the "My Recent Documents" menu found on the Windows Start Menu.

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