How can I manage (especially delete) the history items which appear in the Microsoft Word ‘Save As’ dialogue box?

You can remove the entries in the ‘Save As’ filename drop-down box, but unfortunately this involves editing the registry. If you are comfortable editing the registry, then to remove the entries go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Run’ and type ‘regedit’ (without the quotes) and click OK. In the Registry Editor, assuming you are running Office 2002 (XP), navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice10.0CommonOpen FindMicrosoft WordSettingsSave AsFile Name MRU
Should you be running Office 2003, navigate to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice11.0CommonOpen FindMicrosoft Office WordSettingsSave AsFile Name MRU
(You will see both these registry paths are similar, there are just some minor differences depending on the version of Office you are running). Once at the ‘File Name MRU’ key, look in the right-hand pane and you will see two values:
- Maximum Entries: how many items you want to store in the ‘Save As’ filename history drop-down box.
- Value: the list of ‘Save As’ history items, each separated by a carriage return.

If you would like to clear the history, right-click on the ‘Value’ value and select ‘Modify’. In the window that appears, delete all the Value Data and click OK. You can also modify the number of entries which appear in the history drop-down box. To modify this setting, right-click on the ‘Maximum Entries’ value and select ‘Modify’. Make sure the ‘Base’ is set as ‘Decimal’ (this is extremely important). Then in the ‘Value data’, set the number of items you would like to remain in the history. When I was testing the modification of the ‘Maximum Entries’ value, I found there is a trick involved. If you set the Maximum Entries to a value other than the default value of 10 (e.g. 2) and subsequently clear the ‘Value’ (containing the history list), next time you save a file in Microsoft Word, the Maximum Entries will automatically default back to 10. To get around this issue, say you change the Maximum Entries to 2, you must not clear the entire ‘Value’ but instead keep two history items. Likewise, if you set the Maximum Entries to 1, you must keep one history item in ‘Value’. Setting the Maximum Entries to 0 and clearing the Value will not prevent a history from being kept. Instead, this will just make the Maximum Entries default back to 10.