How do I remove items Clear Menu doesn't

• Right-click the application icon in the Dock and select Options > Keep in Dock.
• Clear the Recent Items menu in the application.
• Quit the application.
• Right-click the application's Dock icon and select Show Recents.

Hmmm.... That always works for me.

Have you tried deleting preferences?

For TextEdit, the one that appears to store recent items is

com.apple.TextEdit.LSSharedFileList.plist

(In your home/Library/Preferences folder. You can get to the Library by holding down the option key while using the Finder Go menu.)

charlie

Jimr: I had the same problem trying to remove recent items from the quicktime icon when right clicked from the dock. As Linc stated I cleared recent items from the menu bar then completely shut down and powered up and it was gone. Previous to that I was just trying a restart and it never worked.

Repairing the permissions of a home folder in Lion is a complicated procedure. I don’t know of a simpler one that always works.

Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the page that opens.

Drag or copy — do not type — the following line into the Terminal window, then press return:

chmod -R -N ~

The command will take a noticeable amount of time to run. When a new line ending in a dollar sign ($) appears below what you entered, it’s done. You may see a few error messages about an “invalid argument” while the command is running. You can ignore those. If you get an error message with the words “Permission denied,” enter this:

sudo !!

You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning not to screw up.

Next, boot from your recovery partition by holding down the key combination command-R at startup. Release the keys when you see a gray screen with a spinning dial.

When the recovery desktop appears, select Utilities ▹ Terminal from the menu bar.

In the Terminal window, enter “resetpassword” (without the quotes) and press return. A Reset Password window opens. You’re not going to reset the password.

Select your boot volume if not already selected.

Select your username from the menu labeled Select the user account if not already selected.

Under Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs, click the Reset button.

Select  ▹ Restart from the menu bar.

Did you quit the application after clearing the recent items menu?

charlie

Log out and log back in.

When you logged back in, were the Recent Items still cleared from the application menus?

Works for me.

Jim Short of a new terminal command this is the only solution that works for me. Wish I could be of more help.