However, this is a bit misleading in two ways. When you right-click on a program from your taskbar, the list will be gone. Go ahead and set that to and Windows will no longer show the list of recently opened documents. The item we are interested in is Number of recent items to display in Jump Lists. If you go back to the Customize dialog where you enabled Recent Documents, you’ll see two options at the bottom for Start Menu Size: Once you open more documents, the jumplist will again list out recent documents. However, that just temporarily clears the jumplist.
I have already written a detailed post on how to clear jumplists in Windows 7, so read that first. Now there are two ways to get rid of items from a jumplist or from the list of recent documents in Windows 7 and higher: either clear the jumplist or prevent Windows from showing any recent documents at all. This is called the jumplist and it basically includes a customized menu for each program. In addition to the Start menu, if Recent Items is enabled, you’ll also see the list of recent documents when you right-click on a program in the taskbar.
