How to get rid of the Recent Documents list in Microsoft Word and Excel

Every time you click on the office button in Microsoft Word and Excel you will get a menu with options on the left and the list of the documents you opened recently. That can be a good thing if it’s only you who work on that computer but how about the nosy coworkers, boss or even people at home? If you don’t want any of them to see that right away, you can fix it in three simple steps.

Step 1: Click on the Office Button, the big round button on the top left of the screen.

Step 2: Click on the Word Options button on the bottom of the menu window.

Step 3: A new window will show up. Click on the Advanced option on the left, then scroll down the window on the right until you find the Display option. The first feature in the menu is exactly what we’ve been looking for, “Show this number of Recent Documents:”. By default, the program shows up 17 and you only need to change that number to 0. The same thing works just fine in Microsoft Excel too!