Documents showing in recent when not opened

Hi Rebecca,

There is no virus or malware on your system. It is OneDrive accessing your files to compare and sync between your computer and the cloud storage. This is the normal behavior of the program to keep your files up to date between the two locations. The problem is a new setting in File Explorer that is causing these OneDrive updates to be shown as recent files. The updates should be hidden in the background as its not a concern for the user.

There is a comment on page 2 of this post from "markz&" that explains how to turn it off. This solution worked on my own computer and several others I tested, so hopefully it will work for you as well:

markz&

I found out how to fix this at least for me ->

Apparently a new default feature has been added to File Explorer...

• Run File Explorer
• Click the ... menu option (after Filter) and select Options
• 
  • In the Privacy section:
    switch off "Include account-based insights, blah blah blah"

That did the trick for me.

If this is the solution, I wonder why someone from the Microsoft Team told me it was a bug that they are working on.

Also, instead of saying 'include accounts based....' it says on my pc 'show files from office.com' But I use the paid version of Microsoft 365 and I have never used the online office.com. I daren't uncheck it because it seems all my Word files are showing in the office.com version on the cloud, even though they are synched to the paid Microsoft 365 on my PC.

I'm totally confused.

I don't have that option "include account-based insights, recent, favorite, and recommended files"

I only have Show files from office.com.

Could it be attributable that One Drive is backing up each snd every file on Startup (whether or not the user is actually accessing the file) so that the file is automatically being listed ad "recently accessed:? If so, how foes pne stop the backup of every file on Windows start'up -- wouldnt that solve the problem??