How to Fix Word Recent Documents Not Showing

The Recent Documents option is considered a convenient method for Microsoft Office users to restore their stored documents, Excel, PowerPoint, and other files. The Recent Documents option can also assist in the rapid discovery and access of a Word document that is not located on your local PC drive.

Nevertheless, the Recent Document option may not be visible in the Word application, as per the reports of certain Microsoft Office Word users. If this occurs on your Windows PC, there is no need for concern. The subsequent section will provide you with information on the reasons for the disappeared Word files and the steps to restore it.

How to fix Word recent documents not showing up

Now, we will demonstrate some practical techniques for restoring the disappeared Recent Documents list in Word. The procedures described here can also be used in other versions of Microsoft Office software, like Excel and PowerPoint.

Method 1. Sign in your Microsoft account

If you are presently logged out of your Microsoft account, you can login in again using your Microsoft Office account to restore the vanished Recent Documents list.

Step 1. Open a new blank Word document, click "Sign in" in the top right corner, and select "Yes" to allow Office to connect to the Internet.

Step 2. Sign in using your email address or phone number and click "Next" to proceed.

Step 3. Enter password and click "Sign in" to log in to your account.

Step 4. Open a new Word file, go to File > Open > Check the recent document list under Open.

Method 2. Enable the recent documents

If you disable the Recent Document function, you will be unable to see anything in the Open column of the Word window.

Step 1. In a Word document, go to File > Options > Advanced.

Step 2. In the Word Options window, scroll down to find the Display section. In the “Show this number of Recent Documents” list, select the number of recent files to display. Then click OK.

Can I recover disappeared Word files?

After adding Word document files to the Recent Documents list, you can easily retrieve and open them from there. Do not worry if Word does not open your desired Word file. You might start by searching for the document name on your computer or checking the Recycle Bin to see if the file exists.

If sadly nothing is detected, the Word file is most likely lost or missing. At the moment, you should strongly consider using AOMEI FastRecovery. It can recover not just Word documents, but also photographs, videos, emails, music, and other media types. It supports a variety of data loss scenarios, including virus infection, accidental deletion, operating system breakdown, hard drive failure, and so on.

More importantly, it is effective at recovering data from computer hard drives, SSDs, SD cards, USB drives, external hard drives, and other storage devices.

Furthermore, it provides clear and concise interfaces, allowing you to do Word document recovery easily and fast in Windows 11/10/8/7 and Windows Server 2022, 2019, 2016, and 2012.

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI FastRecovery. Choose the exact partition or disk where your data lost and click Scan.

Step 2. Then, the recovery tool start to scan and search. lt will execute the “Quickly Scan" first for finding your deleted data fast, and then execute the “Deep Scan" for searching other lost data.

Step 3. Once the scan is completed, all deleted files, recycle bins and other missing files will be displayed. Please select the file you would like to recover and then click "Recover".

Step 4. Then, select a folder path to save your recovered files.

Step 5. Wait patiently for this process of recovering ends.

Why are Word recent documents not showing?

There are 3 main reasons why the recent documents list may not appear in the Word application.

1: Recent Word documents were manually removed from the Recent Documents list.

Users can remove an individual file from the recently used file list in Microsoft Office by selecting the "Remove from list" option. In reality, unless you press the "Delete" key, the file remains on your entire system. If you manually removed or deleted recently opened or changed word documents from the Recent Documents list, you will need to locate and open each Word file individually on your local computer or external storage device.

2. Microsoft Office is logged out or without a Microsoft account.

When you sign in with a Microsoft Office account in Word 2013, 2016 while editing documents, the Word application may record all of the activities and changes you make to your account. As a result, when you sign out of your Word account, you may lose some recordings, such as those from the Recent Document list.

3: The Recent Documents list was disabled.

Typically, the Office Word Recent Document list was turned on by default. However, due to incorrect operation or personal preferences, some users may disable this functionality to speed up Microsoft Office Word on their PCs. If this is the case, workarounds for this issue are provided in the following section to assist.

Conclusion

Recent documents in Microsoft Word allow you to easily access documents that you use regularly. This tutorial covered all of the main causes and solutions for Word recent documents not showing the issue. Recent documents not displaying in Word can occur for a variety of reasons, all of which are easily handled. However, if you remove a document file, you will not be able to find it among the recent documents. In this case, you can use AOMEI FastRecovery to recover it.