>In your UI, what is the "dashboard" part of it? Are you talking about the "replies" part of the screen on the left? (which is more like a "recent files" list)?
>
>I had thought of putting a "recent files" menu list in the menu but then did not know how to give them the ability to drop a file off the list (although that would probably be the easiest to implement - last 10 or 15 files worked on).
>

I was going to suggest a recent files list. You could set those menu items to call a routine to which you pass an identifier as parameter and that routine opens the file, whatever opens means in your application.

Don't know what version of Office you use, but in the latest, when you click Attach in Outlook, it starts by showing you the documents you've worked on most recently. Really handy, and that's what this would be.

Tamar