Recent Documents List Doesn’t Appear in Microsoft Word, Excel, Etc.

It’s convenient to have a list of recently opened documents available when working with one of Microsoft Office’s components such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. Just open the File menu (Office button in Office 2007), select the document you want, and it opens again. But what if there’s no such list?

The problem may be in the Office component that you are using, or it may be in Windows settings that affect all recent document lists. Try the Office component first.

In Word 2003, for instance:

Click Tools, Options, then the General tab
Check the recent documents list box and set the number of recent documents to display

In Word 2007:

Click on the Office button, then on Word Options -> Advanced
Scroll down to the Display section
Set the value for `Show this number of Recent Documents`

Sometimes the option to change the number of recent documents may be unavailable, “grayed out.” In that case, Windows itself is preventing the display of a recent documents list. To see if recent documents are disabled everywhere:

Click Start, then Run
Enter regedit
Navigate to the following registry entry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

In the right-hand pane, see if there is a DWORD named “NoRecentDocsHistory”. If there is, either delete it or set its value to zero. Then close regedit and reboot.

You may want to clear all recent documents lists when you log out of Windows to prevent anyone else from seeing what you have been working on. That can be done by adding a new DWORD to the registry entry shown above.

Right-click in the right-hand window and click on New
Click on DWORD Value
Name the DWORD “ClearRecentDocsOnExit”
Click on the DWORD to set its value to zero (no clear) or one (clear on log out)
Close regedit and reboot

source: tiplet.com

6 comments to Recent Documents List Doesn’t Appear in Microsoft Word, Excel, Etc.

  • free affiliate ads

    Nice site. Maybe you should try to monetize it with
    http://tiny.cc/05mrc

    They do have 40 days cookie duration and they pay 10-15% commisions. They’ll match ads based on search query of your visitors and display relevant ads on you blog.

  • Free PS3

    This seems to be a very friendly place unlike some of the other blogs I visit.

    Free PS3

  • top 100

    I enjoyed reading this post. I require to read a lot more on this subject as i too had such a problem. Thanks for sharing this info. Any way I’m going to subscribe to your feed and I hope you publish more solutions such as this in the future.

  • locksmith

    Great article! It’s often hard to find such well put together information that makes sense! Keep up the good work!!

  • zkf

    Thanks guys. My problem is that even I have deleted the “NoRecentDocsHistory” from the REGEDIT, but the “Recent Documents” still cannot be displayed.
    Anyway, this is a good article. I appreciate your guys’ help.

    • @zkf It is sad that you could not resolve the issue. Anyhow I have mailed you a link to a site which may give you a solution. Please check it out and let me know.

Leave a Reply

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

  

  

  


*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.