Delete Recently Opened Histories

When you share a PC, or even if you don’t, lists of most recently opened files are displayed. While this is convenient for you when you are working on the documents, it makes it extremely easy for someone else to quickly view your files. For example, if you have Microsoft Word open, click on the File menu and you will see a list of your recent documents.

You can manually override this to prevent it from being displayed by going to the Tools menu, clicking Options, and finding the General tab. Next, find the Recently Used File List and clear the check box.

You can set this preference for any of the Microsoft Office applications. Other steps you can take are password protecting confidential documents. You can set this up in Microsoft Word by once again going to the Options dialogue box. This time, select the Security tab. Enter a password and choose and encryption type. You may set passwords for opening as well as for modifying the document.

While these steps give you some measure of privacy, they don’t necessarily protect you from seekers who want to know what you’ve been working on lately. If you use Microsoft Office along with Microsoft Outlook and have the Journal function enabled in Outlook, a handy day-by-day record of all of your documents is available.

However, Windows also maintains a log of all recently opened files in the system registry. If someone really wants to dig and see what you’ve been working on lately, they can access this file. Even if you carefully deleted files, cleared your journal entries, and password protected every document, someone can access the registry and see it all in black and white.

That’s a lot of work to password protect every document. And it’s even tougher to find and delete the most recently viewed entry in the registry. Doing so is risky business. Anytime you edit the registry you run the risk of doing damage to your PC.

You may think merely deleting a compromising file is good enough. Think again. Even after emptying the Recycle Bin, your files can be recovered with data recovery software. That’s because Windows merely removes the reference to the file, it doesn’t actually wipe it clean.

We have a better way to delete the history of recently opened items generated in your Microsoft Office applications and any unwanted items or customized settings pertaining to email applications such as Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Thunderbird, and PocoMail. Privacy protection software such as ParetoLogic’s Privacy Controls or Evidence Eliminator will clear your histories of recently opened files.

These programs take privacy seriously and are capable of permanent deletion. All this power comes in an easy-to-use software application. No one will be able to see your history of recently opened items, nor will they be able to recover it using any tool, not even the most sophisticated data recovery available.

When you use a program such as either of these tools, you will have the peace of mind that your history is history!