Comments on: SQL SERVER – Clear Drop Down List of Recent Connection From SQL Server Management Studio

By: John

John — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 16:20:20 +0000

zacharydl,

That’s not what this article is about.

By: zacharydl

zacharydl — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 21:28:49 +0000

I was able to accomplish this using Tools -> Options -> Display X files in recently used list. Simply set it to 1 then back to 10. It took some fiddling, but my MRU list has apparently been cleared.

By: piyush

piyush — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 07:09:23 +0000

thnx dude

By: Abhishek

Abhishek — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 20:23:40 +0000

hi Pinal, When i was reading this article just one day ago i was looking for this over net but unfortunately i did’t find anything
but in ur article mentioned about mru.dat file i have searched this file too but i did’t find find one file with name sqlstudio.bin
one gyus in comment says about this file.could u plz tell me what is the purpose of this file and id mru.dat file is not available

By: DougC

DougC — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 18:46:19 +0000

Amazing that the programmers/testers at Microsoft put up with this inability to better manage the list. Something like FileZilla’s account management of FTP accounts is simple, editable, moveable to other computers, etc. C’mon MS!

By: Wayne Erfling

Wayne Erfling — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 21:34:42 +0000

Unfortunately I don’t want to clear the whole list. In the past this list was in the Registry and could be edited.

I see that the mru.dat files (which *(2!@#@($&* Window Search wouldn’t find for me) are now un-editable.

Or has somebody devised an editor for the mru.dat files?

I’m not sure but I think they may be serialized .NET objects, so theoritically…

Makes me miss .INI files.

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 18:48:23 +0000

This is really a combination of the OS and SSMS file placement.
I’ve outlined it here.
Before you delete any file be aware that this file is the configuration file for SQL Server Management Studio. Any customizations you have done will be lost.

To clear the connections list in SQL Server Management Studio and reset it to default settings:

Close SQL Server Management Studio.
Delete or rename mru.dat or SqlStudio.bin file from following location(s).

On Server 2003, XP

–For SQL Server Management Studio 2005:
C:\Documents and Settings\dcoffey\Application Data\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Shell
File is mru.dat

On Server 2008, Vista and windows 7

–For SQL Server Management Studio 2008:
C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Shell
File is SqlStudio.bin

–For SQL Server Management Studio 2005:
C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Shell
File is mru.dat

Kudos to Pinal Dave for such a great site. It has made my life a lot easier.
Thank you.

By: Siddharth

Siddharth — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 14:43:29 +0000

Hi, I understand there are ways to clear the list but I wish to increase the max limit of the MRU list (to something about a thousand) as I connect to a lot of servers everyday and have to type in the credentials manually. Is there a wasy to do this?

By: Amit kulkarni

Amit kulkarni — Thu, 06 May 2010 06:48:46 +0000

Good Article. I was able to clear the old connections.

Thanks
Amit K

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Thu, 06 May 2010 02:31:13 +0000

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By: Paulie

Paulie — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 21:43:42 +0000

Forest, same here – no issues with DELETING or renaming ….Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Shell\SqlStudio.bin

By: Forest

Forest — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:52:32 +0000

I found the removal of SQLStudio.bin to accomplish the goal of clearing the list. However, instead of removing it, I just appended a .BACKUP extension to that file.

Upon opening SQL Management Studio 2008 on Vista x64, it simply recreated the file and the list was cleared.

There do not appear to be any problems, but that doens’t mean there won’t be.

I’m not sure what problems Mike Watkins was refering to, but I have not come accross any yet. Anyway, just wanted to let you guys (and anyone reading this) know.

By: Bell Limoges

Bell Limoges — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 02:11:51 +0000

Thanks for the great writeup. This helps me alot in my decision making.

By: Mike Watkins

Mike Watkins — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:23:50 +0000

There are problems related to removing the SQLStudio.bin file as is contains a number of other values – removal is not supported by microsoft and a number of other posts relating to this subject describe that this is a poor design issue in that it does not allow easy management of the list – as a result and to prevent the unnecessary complications I suggest that you create a new user, log in on that account and open SSMS – it will save a new instance of all the setting, files etc. and once you have successfully logged on the default sql server (using that account) – copy the file created in the new account over your original log out – job done

By: Victor

Victor — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:07:37 +0000

Re: Vista OS & SQL 08

For me it was a different file:
C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Shell\SqlStudio.bin

rename the above file and it does the trick.

By: Imran Mohammed

Imran Mohammed — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 01:15:48 +0000

Just want to add 2 cents to the article.

You might want to keep your folder options, to view show hidden folders, if not then you will not be able to see some folders , like Application Data folder.

Thanks, Very useful information.