It is a good practice to clear the recently opened documents in windows to maintain your privacy in shared computers. A good way to do it is to automate the deletion of the recently opened documents history when yo shut down the system.
To automate this, do the following:
Open the registry editor (start > run > regedit)
Navigate to the key,
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer.
Create a new Dword entry, by right clicking on the right pane(in the empty area) and then select new > Dword value.
Then name the key “ClearRecent-DocsOnExit”, and set its value to 1.
So, from now on when ever you shut down or restart your computer windows will automatically clear the recent document history.
You can also create a new key called “NoRecentDocsHistory” and set its value to 1, to not create a recent document history at all.
When you want to save the recent documents history and not delete it, then you can set the values of the above created keys to 0.
To automate this, do the following:
Open the registry editor (start > run > regedit)
Navigate to the key,
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer.
Create a new Dword entry, by right clicking on the right pane(in the empty area) and then select new > Dword value.
Then name the key “ClearRecent-DocsOnExit”, and set its value to 1.
So, from now on when ever you shut down or restart your computer windows will automatically clear the recent document history.
You can also create a new key called “NoRecentDocsHistory” and set its value to 1, to not create a recent document history at all.
When you want to save the recent documents history and not delete it, then you can set the values of the above created keys to 0.