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How do I delete the My Documents option from my Start menu?

Question:

How do I delete the My Recent Documents and the My Documents in the Start
menu? I’m running Windows XP Pro. I still use the floppy drive I have and I
when I save information that I have always put on my hard drive, it will be
saved in the My Documents or the My Recent Documents.

In this excerpt from
Answercast #82
, I show how to customize the Start menu through the
Properties dialog box.

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Delete options from Start menu

So, I’m assuming you want those menus to go away completely.

If you’re just trying to delete an entry from them, you can right-click on the entry when you see it in the menu and click on Delete.

Remove “My Documents”

To actually delete the “My Documents” item from your Start menu:

  • Right-click on the Start menu;

  • Click on Properties;

  • Click on Customize;

  • And then in the resulting dialog box, click on the Advanced tab.

That should give you a fairly lengthy list of all sorts of different things that you can customize about the Start menu. It lists what you do and don’t want to have shown in the Start menu. As it turns out, My Documents is one of them.

So, that’s where I’d have you start. Poke around in that customization dialog and see if that doesn’t resolve the issue for you.

(Transcript lightly edited for readability.)

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