Safe to delete shortcut files in Recent folder?

[Markkk]

In my Documents and Settings/Owner folder, there’s a folder called Recent,
which contains several hundred .lnk files with names matching files in the My
Documents folder. They are identified as shortcuts, but I haven’t knowingly
created them, so why are they there and can I safely delete them? The icon
for the Recent folder is different than other folder icons in having a clock
on it, so it may indicate that its contents have time limits on them, but
some of the .lnk files are 3 years old, which may mean I have to manually
delete them to clean up unused files. Is that true?

 

[Adam]

These files are there to help your productivity, under Start menu you should
see under default settings My Recent Documents - those files will appear
here. Your safe to delete these files.

You can delete these files another way, if you have the newer style start
menu (i.e. the big style one) do the following:

Right click on the Start button > click properties > Click on the Start menu
tab (if not already selected) > Click customize > Click on the Advanced tab >
Near the bottom under recent documents click Clear list.

If your not sure what your doing, always make backups of important documents.

Hope this helps!

 

[Markkk]

Thank you. That was wonderful advice. It’s nice to delete a few unnecessary
files, since the shortcuts went to files no longer much in use.

 

[Ramesh, MS-MVP]

See also:

How To Display, Use, and Clear "My Recent Documents" on the Start Menu in
Windows XP:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/307875