Is there an easy way to remove entries from the recent file list in the SketchUp welcome screen and the file menu?
If not, I would like to ask this to be added at least in the Welcome screen. For instance a right mouse click on the item could provide an option to “remove from list”.
Reason is, that after some testing, I often have a lot of files opened, which I will never use again. Some of them have even the same name, but are stored in a temp directory (trimble connect also downloads the files into a such temp dir).
The Welcome Window items are separately held from the OS recent file listing.
It has not been exposed where SketchUp keeps the Welcome Window file listings.
* For recent Windows versions with JumpLists, you can remove individual items from the JumpList by going to the SketchUp shortcut (in the Start menu or the taskbar if you also pinned it there.) Right-click the icon to reveal the JumpList, and then right-click a SKP file that you wish to remove. Choose “Remove from this list”.
* SketchUp still internally uses it’s own legacy “Recent File List” registry key. To remove a particular file item, you need to note the position of the file you wish to remove. (The recent files are prefixed with a number.)
So, for example to remove the recent file numbered as 8 from a command shell, with SketchUp closed, use: reg delete "HKCU\SOFTWARE\SketchUp\SketchUp 2022\Recent File List" /v "File8" /f
WARNING: SketchUp stops enumerating files to add to the menu when it finds no entry for the number it is looking for. So if you were to remove “File1” from the list, SketchUp would not populate the Recent Files submenu at all. If you were to remove “File5” out of 8 files listed, then the Recent Files submenu would only have 4 files listed (skipping everything beyond 5.)
For the record, I did not describe using the Registry Editor in that post.
I described using the reg.exe command line utility from a command shell.
TIG’s post above gives the key path if you use the Registry Editor to manually delete individual file items from the list.
WARNING: SketchUp stops enumerating files to add to the menu when it finds no entry for the number it is looking for. So if you were to remove “File1” from the list, SketchUp would not populate the Recent Files submenu at all. If you were to remove “File5” out of 8 files listed, then the Recent Files submenu would only have 4 files listed (skipping everything beyond 5.)
@DanRathbun , Sorry yes, it is the reg tool not reg edit tool. - typo
using the reg delete as described, it deletes the entries from the welcome screen and the file menu. So it seems these entries have somehow the same source.
@TIG , Thanks, However I do not think that using the reg editor is a very user friendly way.
Therefore I would prefer that @SketchUpTeam adds a possibility to remove entries from the welcome screen using the standard applications user interface.
They‘re listed in the PrivatePreferences.json in the local AppData.
The iPad version already has a ‘remove from list’ in the ‘Welcome screen’ and also displays recent files from Trimble Connect. The webversion has more options, but not the ‘remove from list’
I also checked both JSON files for released versions before posting.
Yes Jack, the recent files as they will be displayed in the Welcome Window (or whatever it gets called) is in the process of being migrated to the JSON files for an upcoming release, but I think the migration is incomplete and still has open issues.
This is not a surprise, as most all settings and properties that can be migrated, will eventually be migrated to the JSON files (for platform parity.) I’m also not surprised that a feature has been “road tested” on the iPad edition before being added to the Desktop editions.
But just like the registry we cannot modify the JSON files whilst SketchUp is running as any changes we would make (manually or via scripting) would be overwritten when SketchUp closes.
So, I also agree the “remove from list” is a good feature that would be best implemented natively rather than us messing around with the settings.
