How to remove folder from Explorer's jump list

Question

I'm using Windows 7 and Windows Explorer some folders were added to the taskbar jump list (under the Frequent section) that no longer exist. When I try to remove those folders from the jump list (using context menu's "Remove from this list" option) nothing happens and the folders are still shown.

When I try to access those non-existing folders windows prompts that selected item is not available and asks whether I want to remove it from the list. Regardless if I select "Yes" or "No" the folder still remains in the list.

Answer 1

See this article

Navigate to this folder and delete what you need

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations

Now you will see a list of files with very long and convoluted names. This is because they are all encoded. Each one represents a list of recent items for a particular jumplist.

It’s impossible to tell which entries go with which jumplists unless you open the file in a text editor and browse through. However, since all of the files are just recent items in a jumplist, you can delete all the files and it will clear all recent items on all jumplists.

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Answer 2

Microsoft Support say: "There is unfortunately no automated way to clear the jumplists or exclude items from being displayed there. However, you can opt to delete the entire jumplist items by deleting the Recent items. There seems to be no particular way to delete set of jump list items that belong to a particular program."

Answer 3

I succeeded in removing the jumplist related to a particular program in the following way:

1. Go to the mentioned directory by using the command line editor.
2. In the Windows taskbar, change the jumplist of the particular program by e.g. adding or removing a pinned item
3. In the command line editor, execute dir /o:d to get a list of all files ordered by change date. The jumplist-file that is related to the applicable program is shown at the bottom of this list.
4. In the command line editor, you can remove this jumplist-file to cleanup the jumplist.