Annoying Mac habit I can't get my head around.

[Structaural]

In my "recent items" under the apple menu, I've got the subheadings Applications, Documents and Servers. Should there be "places" in there too?

No you only get places in your save/open dialog

 

[teuchter]

Strange.

If you open up a Terminal window and type

defaults read -g NSNavRecentPlaces

do you get any meaningful results? or something like The domain/default pair of (kCFPreferencesAnyApplication, NSNavRecentPlaces) does not exist.

I get a list of directories/folders. The ones I've visited recently. Which I presume is what it should be?

NSNavRecentPlaces is the Preference setting for your Recent Places*, it's stored in the file ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist. It might have become corrupted.

You could try

defaults delete -g NSNavRecentPlaces

(just to be safe, this clears out any existing records)

and then

defaults write -g NSNavRecentPlaces -array

in the Terminal to re-initialise it.

* e2a: independent of the setting for Recent Items on the Apple Menu.

Tried that but no difference.

 

[cybertect]

I get a list of directories/folders. The ones I've visited recently. Which I presume is what it should be?

Yep. Hmm.

IIRC, Vectorworks is a Carbon App. It could be worth trying this instead (the first one I suggested would only work with Cocoa apps like Safari).

defaults delete -g AppleRecentFolders
defaults write -g AppleRecentFolders -array

Also, check out this thread

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=140351

Especially Thundermutt's comment, 3rd from bottom

I have had this EXACT SAME problem for a few weeks now. But today a friend of mine suggested a solution that fixed it, so I thought I'd post it here.

First, go to Terminal and enter: ls /Volumes/

If it lists any volumes other than your internal hard drives, this may be the problem. In my case, a mounted volume from my Windows PC was showing up, even though I'd ejected it.

The fix was to just run: sudo rm -R /Volumes/X

...X being the name of the "extra" volume.

WARNING: Be absolutely sure that this extra volume is really disconnected first!! I actually unplugged the PC's network cable to be sure.

Once I did this, and reconnected to the PC, it was suddenly remembering locations in Recent places. Hope this helps some of you as well.

You'll need Admin access to your machine to do this - sudo grants you root privileges.

*** Heed his warning about making sure that you're disconnected from any spare drives or servers before proceeding! ***

 

[teuchter]

Yep. Hmm.

IIRC, Vectorworks is a Carbon App. It could be worth trying this instead (the first one I suggested would only work with Cocoa apps like Safari).

defaults delete -g AppleRecentFolders
defaults write -g AppleRecentFolders -array

Tried the delete command and it says:

2008-02-29 17:37:44.206 defaults[856] 
There is no (AppleRecentFolders) default for the (kCFPreferencesAnyApplication) domain.

Did the write command.

Nothing seems to have changed though.

Also, check out this thread

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=140351

Especially Thundermutt's comment, 3rd from bottom



You'll need Admin access to your machine to do this - sudo grants you root privileges.

*** Heed his warning about making sure that you're disconnected from any spare drives or servers before proceeding! ***

It just lists my hard disk and the main office server. Which I presume is all in order.

 

[cybertect]

I get a list of directories/folders. The ones I've visited recently. Which I presume is what it should be?

Yep.

Alright, I'm stumped for the time being.

e2a: You did try saving some documents to places that aren't in the Side-bar (such as your Desktop or Documents folders) since making the changes?

 

[teuchter]

Yep.

Alright, I'm stumped for the time being.

e2a: You did try saving some documents to places that aren't in the Side-bar (such as your Desktop or Documents folders) since making the changes?

Yeah, I did.

Thanks for your help though. Don't worry about it. It's not life-threatening.