Snow Leopard Breaks Recent Items

Question

Snow Leopard Breaks Recent Items

Hardware: MacBook Pro (Intel) / Software: OS 10.6

Some people on the Apple Discussion forums have been complaining about Snow leopard corrupting iWork applications' and other Apple applications' ability to remember recent items. I have experienced the same problem. I installed Snow Leopard yesterday, and noticed that the following applications no longer remembered recent documents when I went to 'Open Recent':
- Keynote
- Numbers
- Pages
- Preview
- Text Edit
I dragged the file 'com.apple.recentitems.plist' to the Trash, emptied the Trash, and rebooted. That fixed the problem for all the applications. I had installed Snow Leopard in the normal manner, but for some strange reason, at the end of the installation there was a message saying that an application stopped Snow leopard from finishing the installation. So I reinstalled it and then discovered the problem mentioned above.

Next, I installed Snow Leopard on my wife's identical model (MacBook Pro - Intel). The installation went fine on the first try, and she had no problems with the 'Recent items' in any of her applications. With me, it sounds like the 'com.apple.recentitems.plist' file got corrupted when some glitch stopped the first installation of Snow Leopard. But it makes you wonder what other files could have been corrupted. Theoretically, nothing should remain corrupted if the operating system has been installed successfully.

P.S. The question for this feedback form which asks, 'Which operatin system are you running?' needs to be updated to include 'Mac OS 10.6.x'. That is currently not one of the choices, so I had to choose 10.5.x, even though that was not the case.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Aug 30, 2009 5:14 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

dwb

Level 7

32,920 points

Aug 30, 2009 6:00 PM in response to Merged Content 1

As far as I know, SL's installer doesn't touch the files in our user folder so the installation wouldn't have corrupted your plist. What's more likely is that the plist was already corrupt when you installed SL but Leopard ignored the corruption whereas SL didn't.

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Answer 2

Sep 2, 2009 12:32 AM in response to Merged Content 1

I have the same exact problem. I tried deleting the com.apple.recentitems.plist file, but it didn't help.

What could be done?

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Answer 3

Sep 2, 2009 4:05 PM in response to Andras Dombovari

I have the same issue,

But a workaround until apple fix the issue, is enabling the global option for Recent Items under appearance in System Prefs then lets all applications as well as the apple menu list the documents.

Kind of annoying as I don't want them listed in the apple menu ever,
I only want the individual apps to remember what docs its opened.

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Answer 4

Sep 5, 2009 9:44 PM in response to Andras Dombovari

Did you drag 'com.apple.recentitems.plist' to the Trash, empty the Trash, and then reboot? You have to do it in that order.

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Answer 5

Sep 7, 2009 1:46 AM in response to Merged Content 1

First I deleted the "com.apple.recentitems.plist" file and checked the applications if the "Open Recent" menu was populated. It was still empty.

Then I deleted the "com.apple.recentitems.plist" file again and rebooted the computer right away. That solved the problem.

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Answer 6

Sep 7, 2009 9:03 PM in response to dwb

That makes the most sense to me (recents.plist file already corrupted but problem not recognized by the older Leopard OS). Some people have the problem with the corrupted recents.plist file, but most do not. If the Snow Leopard installation was the culprit, it would be happening to everybody when they installed it.

If any of you reading this have the same problem, remember that you must delete the plist, then reboot before checking your 'Open Recent' items, in order for the fix to work.

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Answer 7

Sep 7, 2009 11:58 PM in response to Andras Dombovari

I cannot find the "com.apple.recentitems.plist" anywhere on my computer.

i am having the same problem described here.

Can anyone describe where it is exactly. (The entire path).

thanx

NPJ

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Answer 8

Sep 8, 2009 12:04 AM in response to Norman Jackson

Go into your home folder. Then Library -> Preferences -> com.apple.recentitems.plist

...so the path is:
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.recentitems.plist

...or the full path is:
Your Hard Drive/Users/youruser/Preferences/com.apple.recentitems.plist

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Answer 9

Sep 8, 2009 12:22 AM in response to Andras Dombovari

THANX,
that worked
norm

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Answer 10

Sep 9, 2009 6:10 AM in response to Merged Content 1

I have 2 laptops with 10.5.8 and do not see com.recentitems.plist on either. Neither a manual or Spotlight search show this file. Where did it go in Leopard?

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Answer 11

Sep 12, 2009 10:55 AM in response to Vic_Stevens

The actual file name is 'com.apple.recentitems.plist' (not com.recentitems.plist). You should be able to find it by going to your home folder, then 'Library' then 'Preferences'.

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Answer 12

Sep 18, 2009 6:10 PM in response to Merged Content 1

Snow Leopard broke Toast 6. Logic 8 generated some complaints about MIDI drivers being outdated.

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Answer 13

Sep 19, 2009 5:38 AM in response to Andras Dombovari

Correction on the full path from "Macintosh HD" ie. your root hard drive.

Macintosh HD/Users/youruser/Library/Preferences/com.apple.recentitems.plist

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Answer 14

Sep 25, 2009 2:57 AM in response to Merged Content 1

Hi,

you can try to run the following command in Terminal:

*$ defaults write com.apple.APPLICATION_NAME NSRecentDocumentsLimit -int 10*

For example:

*$ defaults write com.apple.Preview NSRecentDocumentsLimit -int 10*
*$ defaults write com.apple.TextEdit NSRecentDocumentsLimit -int 10*

Then restart Preview/TextEdit/WhatEverElse and it should do what you want.

Hope this help,
Mikhail

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Answer 15

tkrampe

Level 1

0 points

Oct 6, 2009 3:16 AM in response to sharemind

Nothing of the above mentioned solutions work for me. I also try to use the Terminal to remove the com.apple.recentitems.plist and reboot, but it also didn't work.

Any other hints ?

Thomas

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