Should my dropdown of recently used items show items I no longer have access to
- by Dan Hibbert
We are implementing a client for our document management system. Part of this is the checkin screen where one of the fields a user chooses is the folder where the document should be checked into.
In our original system, this was represented with a combobox where a user could hand type a folder path or select a path from a list of 5 folders they'd recently used for checking. It is possible that between the time they used the folder and the time they are doing the new checkin the user will no longer have access to the folder. At present, we still show the folder as an option and then, if the user chooses that folder, display an error message when the user submits the check in.
We are thinking of removing these recently used folders the user doesn't have access to (we'll make a check when the form is instantiated) because why show an option if we know it will cause a failure (and another dialog message the user has to OK). However, an opposite opinion is that if we remove those folders, the users will think the system has "forgotten" their recent choices and will lose trust in what they are using.
I'd like to get some opinions on the better user experience for this problem.
