Get a FREE fully-working copy of Steganos Security Suite 7 (worth £49.99) when you sign up to the Practical PC Newsletter. Review: Recent Documents 2002
Turbocharge your Documents Menu. Review of Recent Documents 2002 by Kai Chandler
| Product | Recent Documents 2002 |
|---|---|
| Company | Oakley Data Services |
| Web | www.recentdocuments.com |
| Price | £15.00 Sterling or around 22 US Dollars or around 24 Euros. This licences your main PC and a portable PC. |
| We like | It's a real time saver. |
| We don't like | Category view doesn't display correctly on my graphics card. |
| Rating | 9/10 |
| Requirements |
One of the quickest ways to find and open a document that you've worked on recently is to use the Start Menu where you'll see a menu called My Recent Documents (XP) or simply My Documents.
This is a simple list of the last 15 document files that you have accessed - select the file and it will open in the correct application. For example, an Excel spreadsheet will open in Excel and a Word document will open in Word as long as the association is properly defined elsewhere in Windows.
That's great as far as it goes but it's a bit limited. For example:
- You can't customize how documents are listed or how many documents should be retained for future reference.
- You can't ignore old documents, for example, anything over ten days old.
- You can't easily remove a document from the menu if you don't want others to see it there.
- If you have several documents with the same file name, but sitting in different folders, only the last document referenced will be stored.
- You can't put documents into categories.
Turbocharge "My Recent Documents"
Recent Documents 2002 from British software house Oakley Data Services addresses these weaknesses and more. Recent Documents has been around for a while but the latest release brings it into line with Windows XP, and adds a search function. It's an application to replace and enhance the functionality of the Documents Menu of Windows 9x, ME, NT and Windows 2002, and the My Recent Documents menu of Windows XP.
When installed, you'll see a folder view when you select "My Recent Documents" This contains the 15 recently opened documents. You can select how they should be displayed - as a simple or detailed list or as large or small icons. I prefer the detailed list as it shows when the file was last opened as well as the file type and folder name. You can also sort the entries by filename, date opened, file type and folder. If you create or open a document while Recent Documents 2002 is running, the view is automatically refreshed to include the new filename so it's always up to date.
Power users may think a list of 15 recently opened documents is small beer - but don't worry as you can set the limit as high as you like. You can also set the maximum age that they are displayed to any value of days you wish.
If you select a document and then right click it, the displayed menu gives you a set of options:
Open - to open the document in its application.
Send to - to send the document to a floppy disk or archive (the latter needing a separate Archivepro application)
Locate - opens the folder view in Windows Explorer of the folder containing that document
Remove - this just removes the document pointer from "Recent Documents 2002" - it doesn't touch the original document. It might be useful for privacy reasons if others use your PC.
Lock - this keeps the locked document available in "Recent Documents 2002" until unlocked.
Categories
You can also create categories and drag and drop entries into those categories. For example if you run a business and have a number of client files, you can store them in a "Client Documents" category.
The categories work best when documents are assigned automatically according to rules eg. Move Client to Category "Client Documents." Rules let you set up automated actions according to the name of the document. You can define rules to specify a list of document names that should or should not be included in the Recent Documents listing. More usefully, the Move rule automatically moves documents into a particular category.
New Search feature
Search is a neat new feature, especially if you display a large number of documents in "Recent Documents 2002" Let's say you want to look for documents that you've opened recently that contain the word "invoice." Just press F3 and you can enter "invoice" as a search string. Then only matching document names are listed.
I noticed a few minor glitches with Recent Documents 2002: when you click the My Recent Documents icon on the start menu, it should really start immediately but rather it displays yet another icon that you have to select - that's one more click than necessary. Also, it doesn't remember your preferences unless you select Terminate and Download from the File menu. The Categories view didn't seem to draw the screen properly when using XP - this may be down to an incompatibility with my Nvidia Geforce2 graphics card. The problem occurred when clicking in the Category view window. Colin Messitt at Oakley Data Services tells Practical PC that these will be addressed where possible in the next build.
Recent Documents 2002 has a lot to offer so why not take a look for yourself? It's easy to install - just download and run the file. It will run for 15 days after which you'll need to register if you want to keep using it. What could be fairer than that?
