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In PreferencesHistory, Foxit Reader has the settings Maximum number of documents in history list and Maximum number of documents in Recent Documents list. The former can be set as high as 200, and the latter to 10.

I want to find some old PDFs that I looked at a month ago. The Recent Documents list is found under FileOpen, but this isn't long enough to still list these old PDFs.

How can I access the history list?

3 Answers 3

7

Seems that this is impossible, the list of documents latest are saved in the registry, in:

HKCU\Software\Foxit Software\Foxit Reader X.X\Preferences\History

When the limit is reached the oldest records are deleted to make room for newer files.

1
  • Thanks much. For the record, it is possible to read these registry data, although it is annoying. Once you navigate to the registry location that Tiago provides, the path information for the file is listed under the variable FileName. To copy/paste it, right-click on FileName and select Modify.... Mar 12, 2014 at 15:06
2

The following AutoIt scripts will save out the most recent 99 files opened by Foxit Reader and save to a log file.

#include <MsgBoxConstants.au3>

$log=FileOpen("d:\tmp\foxitRecentFiles.log",$FO_OVERWRITE)
If -1 = $log Then
   MsgBox(0, "Error", "Unable to open file")
   Exit
EndIf

for $i = 1 to 99
   $key = StringFormat("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Foxit Software\Foxit Reader 7.0\Preferences\History\LastOpen\%d", $i)
   $rPdf=RegRead($key, "FileName")
   if @error <>0 then ExitLoop
   if FileExists($rPdf) then
      FileWrite($log, $rPdf & @CRLF)
   EndIf
   ;MsgBox($MB_SYSTEMMODAL, "FileName:", $rPdf)
Next
FileClose($log)
1

On OSX, you want to get the plist files (which is the analog to the Windows registry discussed in stderr's answer). Unfortunately, this plist file doesn't seem to contain a much longer version of the recent files list as does its Windows analog. Rather, it keeps the same short (e.g., 10 item) list that appears under the normal "Recent files" list in Foxit Reader, plus a seemingly random selection of PDF files (in my case, 10) in a somewhat different format within the plist file. These PDF files were ones I had opened, but were definitely not opened recently.

So this is probably not useful, but I include it for completeness. The recent file list appears to be stored at

/Users/<username>/Library/Preferences/com.foxit-software.Foxit Reader.plist

Unlike many plist files, this one is stored as a binary file rather than plain text. However, it can be converted to XML using the plutil:

plutil -convert xml1 -o - <file name>

or pulling it all together, you need to run this in the command line

plutil -convert xml1 -o - /Users/<username>/Library/Preferences/com.foxit-software.Foxit\ Reader.plist

where of course you must replace <username> with the relevant username. Note also the backslash between Foxit and Reader, which is necessary to correctly escape the space in the filename.

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