Can’t pin folders to my Windows Explorer icon on the taskbar

When you right-click Windows Explorer icon on the taskbar in Windows 7, you can see list of recent items (i.e. recently opened folders) with an option to pin some of them permanently. On some Windows 7 systems user may experience issues with recent items and pinned entries list not being displayed, missing or cleared without reason. New items cannot be added to these lists.

Recent and pinned items are stored in AutomaticDestinations hidden system folder and at any time one or more of them can become corrupted, resulting in above mentioned behavior.

To fix this:

  1. Open Windows Explorer (Win+E).
  2. Type or copy and paste %AppData\%Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations path and hit Enter.
  3. Find and delete all files that are significantly larger than others (i.e. having over 1 MB in size).

Removing corrupted file usually solves the problem. Items can now be added, however lists must be recreated manually from scratch.

Leave a Reply