How to See Recently Opened Notepad Files?

If you have recently closed a Notepad file and the folder where it was located and you do not know which directory it is in, or if you have been working with Notepad files in different directories and want to access those files faster without going through directories one by one, finding a way to show you the most recently opened Notepad files is what you need.

To see recently opened Notepad files, this article reviews three methods: using the Windows Taskbar, using PowerShell, and through the Recent Items directory.

Method 1 (using the Windows Taskbar)

To see recently opened Notepad files in Windows 7, 10, or 11, follow these steps:

Step1: Open the Notepad file.
Step 2: From the Windows Taskbar, right-click on the Notepad icon to see the last opened Notepad files. In Windows 11, it shows up to thirteen recent files opened with Notepad.

The key point here is that in the list of Notepad files displayed after right-clicking on the Notepad icon in the Windows Taskbar, certain actions can affect file accessibility. If a file has been moved from its original directory, renamed, or deleted, clicking on that file will prompt Windows to display a message. This message indicates that the file is unavailable.

"The item you selected is unavailable. It might have been moved, renamed, or removed. Do you want to remove it from the list?"

In this case, it is not possible to open that file through this method.

Method 2 (Using PowerShell):

To see recently opened Notepad files using PowerShell, follow these steps:

Step 1: Press Windows key + x
Step 2: Click on Terminal (Admin) to enter PowerShell.
Step 3: Open PowerShell, enter the following code:


                        $recentFolder = [System.IO.Path]::Combine($env:APPDATA, 'Microsoft\Windows\Recent')
                        Get-ChildItem -Path $recentFolder -Filter "*.txt.lnk" | Sort-Object LastWriteTime -Descending
                            | Select-Object Name, LastWriteTime

Step 4: Press the Enter button

Using the PowerShell method, a list of the 15 most recently opened Notepad files with the .txt extension is displayed, including the time (in hours, minutes, and seconds) and the date of the last time each file was opened (in year, month, and day).

Method 3 (through the Recent Items directory)

By navigating to the directory C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent and searching for the term .txt in the search box, we can sort the results by 'Date modified' in descending order. This displays the most recently opened Notepad files from top to bottom, assuming that the default program for opening .txt files in Windows is Notepad.