Visual Studio 2008 - More control over Recent Projects list in Start Page

If you work with a lot of samples, the chances are quite likely that you will end up in a rather dirty list of Recent Projects List in Visual Studio. I'm personally quite nit-picky and I really hate it when I find something like this...

Now... I don't know which of these Samples should I click on (since I have two in the list!). Anyway, there are multiple reasons why you would like to remove the junk entries from this list. One way is to open the Registry and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\ProjectMRUList. This list contains all the values you are looking for. Delete the values which you don't like and restart Visual Studio.

Another way, which I think is a smarter one is to download this ZIP and do the following...

1. Extract it anywhere in your machine.
2. Open Visual Studio, click on Tools -> External Tools...
3. Click on Add button and in the Title field, write "Clear Recently Used List"
4. In the Command Line, browse to the <SAVED__PATH>\ClearRecentItems.exe and click on OK.

4. Now, you should have this tool listed on your Tools Menu in VS 2008.

5. Here is the sample output...

Feel free to download the code for this small utility...

 

Hope this helps,
Rahul

Comments

• Anonymous
  June 17, 2008
  It would be better if Visual Studio had a built-in tool where developers could manage the Start page. For example, it should allow selective removal of projects by right-clicking on the project name.

• Anonymous
  June 17, 2008
  Nice tool - but it is Visual Studio 9 aka Visual Studio 2008 ;-) -- SvenC

• Anonymous
  June 17, 2008
  Kjopc, I agree with you, totally! If you feel strongly about it, feel free to give feedback at http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/Feedback SvenC, Thanks for pointing out :-) My bad, just corrected it. Cheers, Rahul

• Anonymous
  June 17, 2008
  .NETOpenCSV#Explorer-AVisualStudio2005add-inwhichinteractswithWindowsExplorerVisual...

• Anonymous
  June 17, 2008
  .NET OpenCSV# Explorer - A Visual Studio 2005 add-in which interacts with Windows Explorer Visual Studio

• Anonymous
  July 10, 2008
  Nice tool. Too bad it doesn't refresh the Recent Projects list after deletion.

• Anonymous
  July 10, 2008
  Hi Songstre, Thanks for your comments! AFAIK, this can't be done from this tool simply because VS loads it from the registry while starting up. If I come to know of any API / Method which induces that call, I will update this tool. Rahul

• Anonymous
  August 08, 2008
  Just don't run the tool on a fresh install of VS2008! It cores (object reference set to null...) because there is no list!

• Anonymous
  September 12, 2008
  Rahul, A great tool - any chance you can modify it to work with VB Express 2008? Doug.

• Anonymous
  September 12, 2008
  Doug Urquhart-Mitchell, Thanks. Stay tuned on www.dotnetscraps.com. I will post it once it is done. Can you mail me the registry key for Express edition. Instead of making it hardcoded, I will make it configurable. It should be something like... HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftVisualStudio9.0ProjectMRUList Thanks, Rahul Mail me at rahulso@microsoft.com, and I will get it done whenever I get an opportunity.

• Anonymous
  October 15, 2008
  "Feel free to download the code for this small utility..." Really, I do not know how to download the code...

• Anonymous
  October 20, 2008
  Sorry about that as well as the late response JM! I removed the code by mistake. Right now, I don't have access to the FTP. If it is urgent, mail me and I will give a copy through email. Thanks, Rahul

• Anonymous
  January 07, 2009
  Why don't you just post the code on Code Plex?

• Anonymous
  March 22, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  June 05, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  July 16, 2009
  Great utility-- much more elegant than the PowerShell script I'd been using.