Is there any purpose to these registry keys?

[ChrisGreaves]

(Guess what I was exploring over the long weekend ...)

UselessRegistryKeys.png

I have successfully accessed (and profitably used) the file shortcuts listed in “C:\Users\Chris\Recent” and then found myself in RegEdit.exe staring at “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\Open Find\Microsoft Office Excel\Settings\Save As\File Name MRU”.
I VBA’d the values and checked them out.
They are path-less file names which, to me, seems particularly useless.
Other examples abound ...

[HansV]

The list in your screenshot shows the file names that will be displayed in the File name dropdown in the File > Save As dialog in Excel. In other words, it is different from the list of recently opened files shown in the File menu.

[ChrisGreaves]

... will be displayed in the File name dropdown in the File > Save As dialog in Excel....

Oh.
(Thinks for a few seconds).
So if they are being used, Excel, in this case, is probably prefixing with its known paths.
(It's OK. I'll go explore a bit more this weekend ...)
I was prowling around looking to see what useable data might be lying around in the Systems Registry before getting down to a design phase.

[John Gray]

I was prowling around looking to see what usable data might be lying around in the Systems Registry before getting down to a design phase.

Even after years and years of investigating the registry, I still would be very wary of acting on any "looking to see what usable data might be lying around in the Systems Registry". It is a complicated animal, and "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing", paraphrasing Microsoft's injunction:
Warning Serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly by using Registry Editor or by using another method. These problems might require that you reinstall the operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that these problems can be solved. Modify the registry at your own risk.

[Jay Freedman]

I was prowling around looking to see what usable data might be lying around in the Systems Registry before getting down to a design phase.

Even after years and years of investigating the registry, I still would be very wary of acting on any "looking to see what usable data might be lying around in the Systems Registry". It is a complicated animal, and "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing", paraphrasing Microsoft's injunction:
Warning Serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly by using Registry Editor or by using another method. These problems might require that you reinstall the operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that these problems can be solved. Modify the registry at your own risk.

This is a classic case of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing", but if you know what you can touch without serious consequences vs. what you should avoid at all costs, the registry is a vast resource. In my pre-retirement day job creating installation programs for networking software, I "prowled" and modified the registry daily and never had so much as a hiccup in Windows. OTOH, I would never allow a program like CCleaner to "clean" the registry -- automatons just aren't smart enough to be sure what to delete and what to leave alone.

I will say, though, that I've always been astonished that Microsoft would design an operating system with a single point of failure like the registry. Backups -- preferably image backups -- are an absolute necessity.

[ChrisGreaves]

... I still would be very wary of acting on any "looking to see what usable data might be lying around in the Systems Registry".

Thanks, John, and I appreciate your warning.
I'm not thinking of writing to the registry at all.
Indeed for the past 20 years or so all my VBA-applications have stuck with INI files because I want to be able to tell a user "I don't write to the registry; indeed this application has no registry-access programming code"
The current application is a tad different.
It wants to find out - on the user's behalf - what files have been used recently. That's why I'm interested in scouring the registry in read-only mode and accumulating a list of files.
Of course, since MS doesn't do any sort of housework, folders such as C:\Users\Chris\Recent\ and SR keys like "Recent File List", "Recent Files", and "File Name MRU" provide data that has to be vetted to remove the names of files that no longer exist.

Anyway, I'm in read-only mode.
So much so that I borrowed some registry code from the web and spent a bit of time deleting every scrap of code that was not referenced by the read-registry-key procedure.

[ChrisGreaves]

I will say, though, that I've always been astonished that Microsoft would design an operating system with a single point of failure like the registry.

I agree.
I recall that at the launch of Win95 trumpeted was the claim that "INI files are vulnerable; the system registry concept will keep everything safe".
That has spawned an industry geared to generating mega-bytes of text saying "Be careful of changing the registry".

It always seemed to me that the SR ought to be padlocked away from everyone OR made available to those who want to dabble.

[John Gray]

The current application is a tad different.
It wants to find out - on the user's behalf - what files have been used recently.

Not a job for DIR?

[Jay Freedman]

The current application is a tad different.
It wants to find out - on the user's behalf - what files have been used recently.

Not a job for DIR?

That depends on your definition of "used". DIR will tell you which files (in a particular folder) were modified recently. The MRU lists for Office programs and the like will tell you which files (in any folder) were opened recently, even if they weren't modified then.

[John Gray]

I bow to your extended requirements!

[ChrisGreaves]

Not a job for DIR?

Like what Jay said.
I consider that I'd like to have rapid access to, let's say, a reference file such as "Passwords.doc", although I may not modify it for months at a time.
If you think about MSOffice's File menu lists they used to show just 9 files; now, I think, 50, but since Office does a poor job of deleting names of non-existent files from the list, each list can be considered to be considerably shorter, and Reference Documents are soon pushed off the list.
Here by way of comparison, is a real MRU list:-

Untitled.png