Why did Microsoft remove the "Recent Places" button within file explorer and windows explorer? The button has saved me probably hours of time that will now be spent clicking and pointing my way to file folder locations. The windows operating system has always had lag time between when clicking on a network folder and it actually being a clickable folder to access. Before, I would click recent places and my network folder which I desired to access would appear, and the folder would immediately populate. Now that recent places is gone, I have a 5-10 second wait every time I click on my local network folder. I have two PC's set up at my office, one being a laptop. Being that I am both a full time student and worker at the accounting office which I'm employed, it's been so much easier to set up both company and school folders for saving files in order for each PC to have access to the other computers hard drive for reading and writing to files. I keep my business documents on the desktop in a network folder that shows up as "WIN8LIFOPROPC/USERS/PUBLIC/DOCUMENTS" and "LIFOPROINC" on my laptop. They're both company devices, as my employer has paid for the laptop which I use for school. The easy access formerly available in Windows 7/8 has now disappeared with the upgrade to Windows 10. I have no idea why they have it set up to force users to select a list of folder names nested within all the other rows of file paths which shows each individual folder location where I've recently been in order to access a recent file/folder. This was a horrible choice by Microsoft; I imagine thousands of other users whom previously sought to save time by clicking on recent places will share this daunting reality and pain along with me.

I believe there is something similar under the new File Explorer.  Click Quick Access at the top left menu and it has a Frequent Folders area.  

• Proposed as answer by Michael ShaoMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator 57 minutes ago

I believe there is something similar under the new File Explorer.  Click Quick Access at the top left menu and it has a Frequent Folders area.  

The Recent Files feature is no alternative because it only shows recent files. Recent Places in Windows 7 shows folders, which is very handy in "Save As" dialogues, for example when you download something.

LIFO-PRO,

There are Recent folders and Recent files available in the right pane of Windows Explorer if we click on the Quick Access.

The places list folders or files that you mostly used.

For the folder that you would like to access frequently, we may pin it to Quick Access.

More reference: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/getstarted-find-your-files

Regards

 You can still run IE11 if you like it better. I do!