Well, I know some users who work with jumplists. When I asked them what they use the jumplists for they told me to open documents that they previously worked on.

One of the things that I really like about jumplists is their dynamic nature. The lists do not show the top 10 documents or features of all time, but the most recently used or opened features. What some Windows users do not know is that it is possible to pin specific jumplist items to the list so that they become permanent.

That’s handy if you have a document, web page or file that you always want to have listed under the program’s jumplist entry in the Windows operating system.

Here is how you pin a jumplist item in Windows. Right-click the program icon in the Windows taskbar to display the program’s jumplist.

Locate the item that you want to pin and move your mouse over it. A pin icon is displayed on the right side of the item. Click that icon to pin the entry to the jumplist. Make sure you click on the pin and not on the item itself, as you would launch it otherwise.

All items that are not pinned may get changed eventually, the pinned items on the other hand will never change. You can unpin items again by following the very same steps.

Are you using jumplists? If so, for what purpose?

Now a Jump List in Windows 7’s Start Menu shows recently used files that have been used for various applications individually in your Start Menu.

These Windows 7 Jump Lists are based on the same old recent items concept, but now that concept has been applied on an application-by-application basis to provide
users a fast, one-click access to the recently used files.

Now how would you know that there’s a jump list present for the application you use most frequently? There’s a little arrow to the right of the application name in the Start Menu, which indicates that a Jump list for this application is available. Users can hover over the application name to expand the consequent Jump List and see a list of the files that they have recently accessed for that program. To open it instantly, all one needs to do is to click on the file name.

Jumplists are also available for items displayed on the taskbar. There is no arrow indicating that a Jumplist is available. To see if it is, right-click an icon on the taskbar.

The number of items that are maintained in each Jump List is 10 by default, but users can expand it to up to 60 by manipulating the Start Menu settings. Just Right-click on the Windows taskbar at the bottom of the screen and select Properties from the context menu, then move to the Start Menu tab in the Properties window that pops up and click on the Customize button. Look at the bottom of the Start Menu customization area; and there you can alter the number of recent items to be displayed in the Jump List. This setting will be universal and will be applied to each application’s Jump List. For the time being, there is no possibility to customize the number of items on an individual application basis.

Now here’s the cherry on the top, you can pin the most frequent items you use to the Jump List, so you never have to worry about them moving off the list. For that, just click the push pin icon that appears right next to the file’s name when you hover the mouse pointer over it in the Jump List, to pin it to the Jump list permanently. Files that you have pinned appear above the dynamic list and do not cycle off, even if you don’t use it for some time. To make an item unpin from a Jump List, simply select it in the Jump list, click on its push pin icon, and choose Unpin from this list.

This functionality makes windows a much easier program to use for those that are constantly switching between files or applications, and have multiple processes open at the same time. If you have been looking for something that will help your efficiency, then this might be just the tool for you.

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.

The recent items that are displayed can be a security and privacy risk. Even more so as there are no obvious means to delete and manage them effectively. The only option that a user has is to right-click specific recent items in the jumplist for options to delete that item.

There is no option to delete all items or to exclude items from being displayed in the jumplist.

What most Windows 7 users do not know is that Microsoft is storing the recent items list in a super-hidden directory that cannot be accessed directly in Windows Explorer. One of the options to access that directory is to copy and paste the following path into the Windows Explorer address bar.

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations

This will display a list of encoded file. Each file contains the information of a specific jumplist. It is however not easy to link those files to a jumplist. The only viable way to do that is to open the items in that folder in a text editor and search for recent items that are in the jumplist currently.

An easier way is to delete all files in the directory which will remove all recent items in every jumplist. This process can be automated with the command

del %appdata%\microsoft\windows\recent\automaticdestinations\*

Experienced users can add this to the Windows Task Scheduler to run the command on every shutdown of the system. (via How To Clear Recent Jumplist Items at Windows 7 News)

It is furthermore possible to drag folders into the jumplists which can be a very comfortable way of linking folders to specific applications. This could for example link download folders and P2P applications, document folders and word processing applications or movie players and movie folders.

While it is possible to drag folders into the jumplists menus it is not possible to do the same with applications. This would also be interesting in cases where applications are used together. It could for instance be useful for webmasters and bloggers to link a web browser like Firefox, Internet Explorer or Google Chrome with software programs that can take screenshots or upload files to ftp servers.

Jumplist Launcher has been designed for this purpose. While it does not provide the means to drag and drop applications into existing jumplists it offers its own jumplist that can be used to add programs to it. These computer programs can be grouped for quicker access. The Jumplist Launcher can list up to 60 different applications in its interface. Names and icons are customizable giving the user full control over how and where the applications are displayed.

Jumplist Launcher is compatible with Windows 7.