kworks: Recent items not visible/updated

ABOUT THIS TOPIC
This topic explains the limitations when using the 'recent documents' feature of AppleWorks 6. At first glance these limitations suggest to the user that the feature either does not work, or that it removes their recent documents altogether.

TWO WAYS TO FIND RECENT DOCUMENTS
AppleWorks 6 displays your recent documents in two places - the File > Open Recent menu item, and the Recent Items tab of the Starting Points window.

RECENT DOCUMENTS ARE ORDERED BY NAME (NOT IN DATE ORDER)
Both the Open Recent menu item and the Recent Items tab list documents in alphabetical order. (Note that document names starting with a number are listed before document names starting with a letter.)

LIMITATIONS OF THE OPEN RECENT MENU ITEM
The Open Recent menu item can contain from 1 to 100 recent documents. By default, this menu item only lists up to 10 recent documents. The limitation of the Open Recent menu item is that it sorts recent documents in alphabetical order. This means that the documents shown in the Open Recent menu item are not likely to be the documents you last used, except where they have a file name starting with a number or an 'early' letter of the alphabet.

WORKAROUND 1
A workaround to the Open Recent Items menu limitation is to increase the number of recent items displayed by this menu. To change the number of items displayed select the AppleWorks > Preferences > General menu, choose Files from the popup menu, and change the value in the 'Remember the last x opened documents' field. The advantage of increasing the number of items displayed is that the document you last opened has more chance of being displayed. The disadvantage is that the recent documents are listed alphabetically and you must recall the exact name of the document to find it. An alternative is to look for recent documents only in the Recent Items tab of the Starting Point window. It displays all recent items without the need to change your preferences. The keyboard shortcut for displaying and hiding the Starting Point window is Cmd + 1.

Note that the Open Recent Items menu offers advantages over viewing documents in the Recent Items tab of the Starting Point window. For example, the Open Recent Items menu displays not only the name of the recent documents but also the hard drive where this document is located. As well, the full name of the document is displayed in the Open Recent Items menu whereas the Recent Items tab of the Starting Point window limits the name of a recent document to 16 characters, making it difficult to indentify similarly named files. Please try these different ways of viewing your recent documents and adopt the approach that is your personal preference.

WORKAROUND 2
Another workaround is to keep an alias to the Documents > AppleWorks User Data > Starting Points > Recent Items folder in a convenient place. The purpose of the Recent Items folder is to store aliases to all your recent files so that AppleWorks 6 can display them in the Recent Items tab of the Starting Point window.

The advantage of this workaround is that, when using the Finder's List View, you can sort the Finder window by 'Date Modified'. This allows you to view the most recently used documents by date, regardless of the document name.

LIMITATION OF THE RECENT ITEMS TAB
This brings us to a limitation of the Recent Items tab - AppleWorks 6 does not clear it. This means the Recent Items tab will store aliases of all the files ever opened in AppleWorks 6.

SOLUTION TO LIMITATION OF RECENT ITEMS TAB
The solution to this limitation is to occasionally open the Documents > AppleWorks User Data > Starting Points > Recent Items folder and delete the aliases it contains. You can automate this task by using an AppleScript to do this. Visit the following web site to download such an AppleScript:
<http://www.geocities.com/dmgsoftware/appleworks/index.html>.