Fixing Disappearing Jumplists Under Windows 7

I recently started to add custom jumplists to my sites. That’s when I noticed that jumplists were not showing up under Windows 7 at all anymore. Even standard programs like Microsoft Office, Firefox or Google Chrome where not showing any jumplists, except for the option to unpin the icon from the taskbar and to launch the pinned program or website.

I read through dozens of blog and forum posts to finally discover the solution that re-enabled jumplists on my system. Instead of just writing down what solved the disappearing jumplist issue for me, I have decided to post all solutions that I encountered during research.

Enable jumplists

First thing you may want to do is to check if jumplists are disabled in Windows. A right-click on any pinned icon on the taskbar is an indicator that something’s wrong with the jumplist display if none are shown, but that does not necessarily mean that jumplists are disabled. Right-click the taskbar and select Properties from the context menu. Switch to the Start Menu tab and make sure that “Store and display recently opened items in the Start menu and the taskbar” is enabled.

If the feature is already enabled you need to further troubleshoot the issue. If it was disabled you may want to re-start your PC to see if the change enabled jumplist support under Windows 7 again. I suggest you test that by right-clicking on a program that is know for supporting jumplists, web browsers come to mind.

Missing Folders, corrupt files

The method mentioned under Enable Jumplists did not work on my system. I had to look elsewhere and found a solution that suggested to delete files in the following directory:

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations\

Only problem was, the Recent\AutomaticDestinations\ folders did not exist on my system. And yes, I made sure to display hidden folders and operating system files.

You can copy and paste the path into Windows Explorer to open it there. If it works for you, you can delete or rename the file 1b4dd67f29cb1962.automaticDestinations-ms in there to fix jumplists under Windows 7.

I made the decision to create the folders instead. I did that in Windows Explorer and created the Recent and AutomaticDestinations folders there. Windows did create another folder there called CustomDestinations.

Jumplists did not work right away, it took a few minutes before I was able to make use of them again. But creating the folders in Windows fixed the missing jumplist issue on my system.

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Author: Martin Brinkmann, Sunday May 22, 2011 -
Tags:jumplist, jumplists, windows 7, windows tips

Responses so far:

1. Ronny says:

   May 22, 2011 at 2:17 pm

   Very cool. Now all we need is to know what the heck is a “jumplist”…

   Reply
   • Ashley Pearson says:

     May 22, 2011 at 4:20 pm

     Google is your friend!

     Reply
2. Jasnz says:

   May 23, 2011 at 12:15 am

   @Ron…if you’re using Windows 7 and you don’t know what a jumplist is, maybe you shouldn’t own a computer.

   Reply
   • Anon A. Mus says:

     May 29, 2011 at 3:47 am

     Until I read this post, I didn’t realize that jumplists existed. They never showed up on my Windows 7 laptop that I’ve had for over a year now. Thanks for writing this post!

     @Jasnz … Thanks for your helpful comment. I still plan to own this computer and many others regardless.

     Reply
3. Fish says:

   May 23, 2011 at 4:04 am

   Hi Martin,

   I lost my taskbar-pinned program Jump Lists just this week. This was almost certainly caused by one of my own hasty tweaking mistakes.

   I found the option to “Store and display recently opened items in the Start menu and the taskbar” was grayed out and unchecked in my Windows 7 x64 Pro.

   In fact, it involved an inadvertently applied Windows policy, traced in the Registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer which contained the entry “NoRecentDocsHistory” with a value set to 1.

   Deleting “NoRecentDocsHistory” and a reboot quickly solved the problem.

   In other instances, another Windows policy could be involved. The whole topic (a third scenario?) is already covered here:

   http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-desktop/jumplists-disabled-option-to-store-and-display/1c05dc81-4983-48e3-a606-6effd64e611f

   Best wishes.

   Reply
   • Martin Brinkmann says:

     May 23, 2011 at 8:39 am

     Thanks for the explanation, it may aid others who encounter the same problem.

     Reply
4. Akshaya.info says:

   May 23, 2011 at 9:39 am

   Hello,

   I have go through your post and found some valuable information about jumplists which is very useful for me.
   So please keep posting.

   Thanks

   Reply
5. Lucas Takahashi says:

   September 3, 2011 at 5:11 am

   Hello, I am but very, very grateful for the post with a solution, is to be congratulated. I live in Brazil, and I am born Portuguese, and it was very difficult to find a quick and simple solution to a problem that becomes much time as needed (up to a Microsoft support Brazil was difficult to find help). Imagine that I have several folders in the explorer jump list to help with the tasks of everyday life, and suddenly with the installation of a third program it stops working, and not restoring it worked :(
   Delete the file there (% APPDATA ……) was my solution, thank you!

   Reply