Microsoft’s office suite has been one of the tools most used by Windows users for decades. With each new version of Office the application is updated with new functionalities, some like more and others less. Have you noticed that Microsoft Word now shows a list with all the recent documents that have been opened ?
If you share your PC with other people, you may not want them to see the latest Word documents that you have edited. The privacy here would be a little exposed, so to solve it nothing better than to delete this list of recent Microsoft Word documents.
How to clear the “Recent” history in Microsoft Word
Cleaning the history of recent documents will depend on how we have configured our word processor.
If Word opens and automatically displays a new document
When MS Word is configured so that whenever we open the application the first thing it does is open a blank document, the steps we must follow are these:
- Open Word and go to the top tab ” File“.
- Click on ” Open” in the menu on the left .
- Right-click on any of the recent documents and select ” Delete unpinned items.”
- Accept the warning message to confirm the deletion.
If Word opens showing the welcome panel
If Word is configured so that when it opens, a welcome panel with the most recent documents is displayed, the steps to follow will be very similar to what we have just commented:
- Hover the mouse over any of the recent documents and right click with the mouse.
- Select “Delete unpinned items.”
- Accept the warning message to confirm the deletion of the history.
Keep in mind that if you have ever pinned a document, it will continue to show in the history. To remove these documents from the list, right click on them and click on “Remove from list”.
How to disable recent document history
If you prefer to completely remove the recent history you can also deactivate it.
- Open Word and go to ” File -> Options“.
- Click on ” Advanced” and among the available options locate the ” Presentation ” section.
- Change the value of “Show this number of recent documents” to zero. Click on accept to apply the changes.
Clever! This way you will no longer see the history of recent documents when you open Word or when you want to create a new document. The function will simply have disappeared. If at any time you want to undo this change, you just have to go back to the advanced options menu and restore its original value (you can make it only show the last 3 documents, 5, 10, etc.).
