All Recent & Pinned File Links Lost

Anonymous
2024-03-20T14:16:19+00:00

I rebooted my PC today after a Windows update and afterwards in Word, Excel and PowerPoint my Recent Files list and Pinned Files List are all empty. And when I open an existing document, it does not show up in the Recent file list like it used to.

How do I fix both of these issues?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2024-03-22T15:04:46+00:00

For those who want to rollback to a previous version of Office 365 here are the directions.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-revert-to-an-earlier-version-of-office-2bd5c457-a917-d57e-35a1-f709e3dda841

The previous version information is: 3/4/2024 Version 2402 Build 17328.20162

To go further back click the following link and scroll down to "Version History".

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/update-history-microsoft365-apps-by-date?redirectSourcePath=%252fen-us%252farticle%252fae942449-1fca-4484-898b-a933ea23def7

You need to make sure you disable updates or the latest version will reinstall at some point.

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-03-21T20:24:58+00:00

    Had a long session with Microsoft support. They don't know what the root cause and they want to just uninstalld and reinstall things.

    I decided not to do it.

    They take forever to type replies. Wasted over an hour.

    In the end they told me what they are not responsible for.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-03-21T15:03:12+00:00

    Based on what another person said about OneDrive being the problem, I checked to see if OneDrive had been recently installed.

    Sure enough, OneDrive was installed yesterday, March 20, the same day all my recent & pinned documents disappeared.

    I uninstalled OneDrive and that seems to have fixed the problem.

    It didn't restore all my pinned documents, but all my recent ones are there, so I can repin them.

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-03-21T14:13:09+00:00

    OneDrive is the problem. See the following.

    I have the same issue that also began on March 20, 2024. I have a lead but not a complete solution. First here's what I did that did NOT work: First Word > Advanced > Options > changed number of files to appear in recent list. Second, ran Microsoft Quick Repair. Third, ran Microsoft Online repair which reinstalled 365.

    Here's what did work briefly: I Unlinked OneDrive. (there is a button in the OneDrive icon to do this). After this I rebooted and the full recent list DID APPEAR in Word. However it did not appear in Excel. I rebooted again and the recent list in Word disappeared again.

    Conclusion: ONEDRIVE IS THE PROBLEM.

    I have not yet uninstalled OneDrive but suspect this might be the full solution.

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-03-20T20:33:55+00:00

    I am having this exact same problem, it started today also. Any luck?

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