Documents showing in recent when not opened

Hello Gooba31,

Greetings!

Thank you for posting in Microsoft Community.

It appears that some of the files shows in recent even if you have not access the files. Let us check and see on what we can do to help resolve your concern in a timely manner.

This issue may occur if the "Show recently used files in Quick access" option is enabled in File Explorer settings. To disable this option, please follow these steps:

1. Open File Explorer.
2. Click on the "View" tab in the ribbon.
3. Click on "Options" and then select "Change folder and search options".
4. In the "Privacy" section, uncheck the "Show recently used files in Quick access" option.
5. Click "Apply" and then "OK" to save the changes.

This should prevent the random documents from appearing in the recent list. If the issue persists, please let me know and we can explore other troubleshooting steps.

We look forward to your response. Kindly let us know, if there is any misunderstanding or clarifications of our description by sending us a reply.

Sincerely,

Tomm_A

HI,

Doing that makes the list disappear, it doesn't address my primary concern that files are being shown as having been accessed when they weren't.

Hello Gooba31,

Thank you for getting back with the thread and truly appreciate for the clarification.

It seems odd that documents appear in recent even if the documents were not open. To check if someone really is trying to access the documents, we can check it by identifying who made the last recent changes. To do this follow the steps below:

1. Open File Explorer and navigate to the folder that contains the document.
2. Right-click on the document and select “Properties” from the context menu.
3. In the Properties window, click on the “Details” tab.
4. Scroll down to the “Origin” section to view the “Last saved by” field. This field displays the name of the person who made the last changes to the document.

If the “Last saved by” field is blank or displays an incorrect name, it’s possible that the document was saved with a different name or that the file properties have been modified.

If you think that someone has access to your OneDrive files, you can change the password of your Microsoft account immediately or make your account safe and secure by following the recommendation provided in this link: How to help keep your Microsoft account safe and secure - Microsoft Support

We look forward to your response. Kindly let us know, if there is any misunderstanding or clarifications of our description by sending us a reply.

Sincerely,

Tomm_A

Hello Gooba31,

Thank you for getting back with the thread and truly appreciate for the clarification.

It seems odd that documents appear in recent even if the documents were not open. To check if someone really is trying to access the documents, we can check it by identifying who made the last recent changes. To do this follow the steps below:

1. Open File Explorer and navigate to the folder that contains the document.
2. Right-click on the document and select “Properties” from the context menu.
3. In the Properties window, click on the “Details” tab.
4. Scroll down to the “Origin” section to view the “Last saved by” field. This field displays the name of the person who made the last changes to the document.

If the “Last saved by” field is blank or displays an incorrect name, it’s possible that the document was saved with a different name or that the file properties have been modified.

If you think that someone has access to your OneDrive files, you can change the password of your Microsoft account immediately or make your account safe and secure by following the recommendation provided in this link: How to help keep your Microsoft account safe and secure - Microsoft Support

We look forward to your response. Kindly let us know, if there is any misunderstanding or clarifications of our description by sending us a reply.

 

Sincerely,

Tomm_A

Dear MS Agent Tomm_A,

With all due respect, please can I ask you to try to understand the issue submitted by the original poster.

The two solutions you have offered do not address the actual problem.

We are not asking who is making changes to these documents, we are asking if they are being opened by unauthorised people.

If the list of 'Recent' opened files in File Explorer is indicating that docs have been accessed (not modified) by unknown people then that is the concern.

Your suggestion of trying to find out who last made changes to a document will not reveal who is simply opening and viewing these documents.

May I politely request that this issue is escalated so that we can get a definitive answer that homes in on the issue.

My hunch is that this phenomenon my have something to do with OneDrive. Perhaps some kind of automatic syncing of random documents to OneDrive registers those documents as recently accessed?

I hope someone at MS can come back with a simple and reliable explanation so that our minds can be put at rest.

Many thanks.

I echo the last comment. This started for me just a few days ago and I can guarantee that the files have not been edited in years. Virtually all of the files in my recent list are now OneDrive files that have seen no activity for years - so the recent list is useless now. This seems to pretty obviously be a new bug in either OneDrive or the File Manager so that when OneDrive checks to see if a file has changed a bit somewhere is flipping causing this to show up in the Recent File list.

Is it possible that a newly installed app is accessing all of my OneDrive files - I guess -and if so I'd like to know what that is. I have two OneDrive instances running. One personal and one corporate.

Test:

• I open a file in the recent list to look at it. It jumps to the top of the list.
• 5 or 10 seconds later another dozen OneDrive files have jumped to the top of the recent list - these are from either of my OneDrive instances
• the very top of the list shows a date-time of now but if I view the file in its source folder in File Manager it shows an edited date in 2022
• I pause my personal OneDrive syncing
• the behavior stops completely. It no longer adds new OneDrive files to the recent list
• I resume my personal OneDrive syncing
• all of my corporate OneDrive files that were in the recent list have disappeared from the list and the adding-files behavior is still stopped

It's very broken. It seems pausing-resyncing stops this behavior at least for a while but that's not right.