Show Most Recently Used File by Application

[lebonk5]

Disclaimer: I'm brand new to Alfred so this is possibly a stupid question.

 

I'd like to quickly list all the most recently used files for a particular program.

 

For example: i'd love to type "recent excel" and have it list my last 10 excel docs used or "recent word", etc.

 

I'd be surprised if this didn't exist in the core offering (vs requiring a workflow). Thoughts?

 

 

 

[rounak]

activate alfred

type app name

press "action" key 

select "recent documents"

[lebonk5]

Thanks rounak, but just to clarify:

 

Are you suggesting that I use Alfred to activate excel, then within excel go to recent documents?

 

If yes, I understand this is an option but I'd prefer the following (made up example):

• Type "RecentExcel" and get a list (within alfred results) of 9 most recently opened excel files
• Type "RecentPowerpoint" and get a list (within alfred results) of 9 most recently opened Powerpoint files
• Type "RecentAll" and get a list (within alfred results) of 9 most recently opened Files of ANY type, etc

Any idea

Edited October 23, 2016 by lebonk5
spelling

[deanishe]

3 minutes ago, lebonk5 said:

Are you suggesting that I use Alfred to activate excel, then within excel go to recent documents?

 

No. Search for Excel in Alfred, select the Excel result and use Alfred's "Actions" key (which is right arrow by default, I think) to show Alfred's File Actions. Choose the "Recent Documents…" File Action to show Excel's recent files in Alfred.

 

You can check which key is set to open the File Actions menu in Alfred Preferences > Features > File Search > Actions.

[lebonk5]

Good stuff, thanks to you both.

One follow up.

• I just did this (type excel, action key right arrow, select Recent documents), but when I get to the Recent Documents it's blank and says "there are no documents to show".
• I tried the same thing in powerpoint and all that shows up is one file that I opened last July (random). 

Any ideas why this may be the case?

 

Edited October 23, 2016 by lebonk5

[deanishe]

As best as I can tell, Alfred's Recent Documents… only contains documents that were opened via Alfred.

[Vero]

@lebonk5 @deanishe Alfred will present recent documents for anything opened in Alfred plus anything made available by the app.

 

Most native Cocoa apps provide the recent documents (regardless of how they've been opened) so Alfred will present all recent docs, but non-native apps like Microsoft or Adobe apps don't tend to so you'll only get those opened with Alfred.

 

Cheers,
Vero

[lebonk5]

Thanks to all of you for the help. Any recommendations on how to accomplish this via a workflow or is this a non-starter?

[deanishe]

9 hours ago, Vero said:

Most native Cocoa apps provide the recent documents (regardless of how they've been opened) so Alfred will present all recent docs

 

Seems I don't use a whole lot of native apps…

 

3 hours ago, lebonk5 said:

Thanks to all of you for the help. Any recommendations on how to accomplish this via a workflow or is this a non-starter?

 

There's a property list located at ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Excel/Data/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Excel.securebookmarks.plist 

 

It appears to contain the same files as Excel's Recent Files menu, but not in any particular order. It wouldn't be difficult to extract the file paths from that file and show them in a workflow.