QuickBooks maintains a list of the company files that you have opened recently – the Previous Company list. You will see this if you select the Open Previous Company from the File menu, or in the No Company Open screen. Deleting the company file from your hard drive won’t get it off that list.
To remove a company file from the list:
- Open any other company file. Select File then Open Previous Company.
- At the bottom of the list select “Set number of previous companies“.
- Set the number to “1” and click “OK“. That clears the list.
- You can go back and set the number to 10 or 20 if you wish, so you can keep a list of company files, but the list has been cleared.
Updated 1/7/2011: Apparently in QuickBooks 2011 there is a bug – this no longer works! At least up through release R5 (which is where we are as I write this). The alternative is messier – locate your “QBWUSER.INI” file (which is in a hidden folder) and remove the file names from the [MRUFILES_STANDARD_STRATUM] section.