In appleworks, if i click file>open recent, i get a pop out box of items. The problem is, the list contains stuff i havn't worked on for over a year! "Mothers day card 03" for example. There is no option for clearing the list, and it's highly frustrating. It wont show stuff i just worked on!! WHY?
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How the hell do i get it to stop doing this???
- Thread starter theipodgod16
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theipodgod16 said:
have you tried deleting the plist file for it? I dunno if they're stored there or in a "shortcuts" file in the app itself.
Unfortunately, I don't have any answers for you. It's been one of my ongoing pet-peeves with AppleWorks, too. It seems to me that it's had this problem since I upgraded to 6.2.4, or something like that. Prior to that the Open Recent actually worked. I've reported the problem to Apple, but none of the updates have fixed it, nor have I received any advice back on how to fix it from Apple. It really makes me think that AppleWorks is a dead product, only being sustained until they release its replacement...
its in the Users folder, inside your username's folder, inside the Library folder in that, in the Preferences library....theipodgod16 said:
Cant explain it well.
Basically its at /Users/(username)/Library/Preferences/(file that begins with com.apple and ends with .plist)
übergeek said:
found the file, i'm just wary of deleteing a file i shouldnt. what is this gonna do exactly? fix my problem i hope?
I played around with it for a while, and I figured some things out.
In the Starting Points window, in the Recent Items tab, it displays pretty much every file you've ever used in AppleWorks (or at least a very large number). This list is a folder of aliases located at Home/Documents/AppleWorks User Data/Starting Points/Recent Items.
Now in AppleWorks, the Open Recent item in the File menu displays the first (alphabetically) 10 (or whatever the number is set to) files from this folder. Some, if not all of the names in the menu are not near the start of the alphabet though. This is because AppleWorks has made a copy of some of the aliases and put a '*' at the start of the their names. This puts them at the top of the folder, and then it trims this from the name when it displays the file in the menu.
In short, what is meant to happen is that AppleWorks creates aliases called '*[File name]' for recent items. It doesn't do this properly though, and I haven't figured out in what scenarios it does.
So, it is relatively easy to manually modify the menu by putting aliases beginning with an '*' in the folder above (and if you want the file at the very top you can put multiple *s at the start of the filename and it will trim them all). This is probably not what you want though, but hopefully it will provide some insight into what's going on.
BTW, to clear the menu, simply delete the above folder.
In the Starting Points window, in the Recent Items tab, it displays pretty much every file you've ever used in AppleWorks (or at least a very large number). This list is a folder of aliases located at Home/Documents/AppleWorks User Data/Starting Points/Recent Items.
Now in AppleWorks, the Open Recent item in the File menu displays the first (alphabetically) 10 (or whatever the number is set to) files from this folder. Some, if not all of the names in the menu are not near the start of the alphabet though. This is because AppleWorks has made a copy of some of the aliases and put a '*' at the start of the their names. This puts them at the top of the folder, and then it trims this from the name when it displays the file in the menu.
In short, what is meant to happen is that AppleWorks creates aliases called '*[File name]' for recent items. It doesn't do this properly though, and I haven't figured out in what scenarios it does.
So, it is relatively easy to manually modify the menu by putting aliases beginning with an '*' in the folder above (and if you want the file at the very top you can put multiple *s at the start of the filename and it will trim them all). This is probably not what you want though, but hopefully it will provide some insight into what's going on.
BTW, to clear the menu, simply delete the above folder.
HexMonkey said:I played around with it for a while, and I figured some things out.
In the Starting Points window, in the Recent Items tab, it displays pretty much every file you've ever used in AppleWorks (or at least a very large number). This list is a folder of aliases located at Home/Documents/AppleWorks User Data/Starting Points/Recent Items.
Now in AppleWorks, the Open Recent item in the File menu displays the first (alphabetically) 10 (or whatever the number is set to) files from this folder. Some, if not all of the names in the menu are not near the start of the alphabet though. This is because AppleWorks has made a copy of some of the aliases and put a '*' at the start of the their names. This puts them at the top of the folder, and then it trims this from the name when it displays the file in the menu.
In short, what is meant to happen is that AppleWorks creates aliases called '*[File name]' for recent items. It doesn't do this properly though, and I haven't figured out in what scenarios it does.
So, it is relatively easy to manually modify the menu by putting aliases beginning with an '*' in the folder above (and if you want the file at the very top you can put multiple *s at the start of the filename and it will trim them all). This is probably not what you want though, but hopefully it will provide some insight into what's going on.
BTW, to clear the menu, simply delete the above folder.
that did it, thanks. Now i just have to remember to trash that folder bi-weekley or whatever.
skywalker said:
the only thing i know about apple script is that its used to tell the computer to do things. Thats all i know. Cant help ya out there.
skywalker said:
This code works to clean in out:
tell application "Finder"
delete every file of folder "Recent Items" of folder "Starting Points" of folder "AppleWorks User Data" of folder "Documents" of folder "[Enter your username here]" of folder "Users" of startup disk
end tell
If anyone's wondering how to make this into an application, go to Applications/AppleScript/Script Editor, paste the code in a script window, go to File menu, Save as, choose Application from the format menu and choose your destination.
just in case you ever need to delete preferences again, dont worry about deleting them. The worst thing that can happen is you having to do the preferences for the app again. or you can drag the file out of the trash. but usually a lot of problems with programs are solved by deleting them.theipodgod16 said:
übergeek said:
so i dont have to empty the trash to delete an item? i can just put it in the trash and see if it works? if it doesnt, i just take it back out of the trash?? This could be some very useful knowledge...
theipodgod16 said:
Pretty much. Applications usually look in specific places for files. Eg for a preference file, they will only look in a Preferences folder. So if you move the file out of there (not necessarily even to the trash), it will not use it and you can test whether the file was the cause of the problem.
The trash is actually just an invisible folder (actually multiple folders, but I won't get into that), which you can access from the Dock. When files are in it, they are not actually deleted, they have just been moved to a different folder. It's just that this folder is emptied when you empty the trash, and you cannot read files when they are in it.