In Office 2007 and Office 2010, uses the following registry trick instead.
#Delete recent documents word 2007 how to#
How to Delete and Remove Individual Recent Files EntryĪnd if you not intend to delete all entries in “Recent Documents”, “Recent Workbooks” or “Recent Presentations” list, it’s also possible to right click on a recent file and select Remove from list to delete the entry from the recent files list. You have to perform the above steps for Word, Excel and PowerPoint individually, where the option name is Show this number of Recent Workbooks: in Excel and Show this number of Recent Presentations: in PowerPoint.
How to Clear and Delete Entire Recent Documents / Recent Workbooks / Recent Presentations List To protect your privacy, users need to delete all file opened history in “Recent Documents”, “Recent Workbooks” or “Recent Presentations”. However, if the same computer and same user account is shared by many people, or you’re using a borrowed or public computer, the recent files list will expose documents using trace. The “Recent Documents”, “Recent Workbooks” or “Recent Presentations” list in Word, Excel or PowerPoint shouldn’t be any problem if you’re the only user on the computer. Since Office 2013 and Office 2016, Office apps also display “Recent” list which shows all recently opened files upon launching of Office apps such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The recent files list records each and every files that user opens recently, and display the list whenever Office button or “File” menu is pressed for quick easy access.
Find and select the documents you want to remove.For Word 2010, you need to go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Word\File MRU HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\File MRU (Note: Office 12.0 is Word 2007). (If you don’t how to do this, you shouldn’t be working in the Registry!!) Note: It’s possible that this Registry modification will also modify the list of files shown in the Compare Documents window. If you are familiar with working in the Registry, then here’s how you find and delete the Recent Document entries you don’t want listed. Be warned: If you are not comfortable with working in the Registry, I suggest that you reset the number to zero using the method above, close Word, re-open Word, reset the number back to what you want, then open and close several documents so that you have a list populated with the documents you want. With Word 2007, you need to delete these entries out of the Registry. However, if you’re using Word 2007, you’ll need to follow the instructions below. You can also change how many you see at the bottom of the Recent Documents/Recent places window.
#Delete recent documents word 2007 update#
Update June 2015: This is much easier in Word 2010 onwards - just right-click on the document in the Recent Documents list and select Remove from list. You only want to get rid of a couple, not the whole lot, so how do you do this? However, what if you only want to remove one or two documents from this list? Perhaps, like me, you need to take a screen shot and there are some document titles in the list that you’d rather not show the world (or your users at least). You can clear the Recent Documents list of all entries by opening Word Options, selecting the Advanced tab, scrolling to the Display section and setting the value for Show this number of Recent Documents to 0 (zero).