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
    2024-03-22T16:44:39+00:00

    This is a workaround, not an answer. While the issue is 'resolved' by rolling back to 2402 - 2403 will eventually be pushed out to everyone, and short of stopping all updates (not a good solution security wise), the issue will return (unless the final 2403 build resolves the issue). Microsoft needs to resolve systemically. But as I said in my earlier post, uninstalling Office 365 and then grabbing a new install from your MS account portal will for the moment pull 2402 and 'resolve' the issue.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-03-22T15:40:45+00:00

    I have 1 person so far (at least reported to me) in my org with this issue. I don't believe it's a version problem. I'm on the Semi-Annual release channel (2308 build 16731.20504), I control the versions being installed to desktops, and I haven't done anything with Office since January this year. This error appeared for us at the same time it did for all of you (March 20, 2024) with the same symptoms. Can't pin docs and the recent file list is empty and remains empty - or in our one case it's showing 2 files from over 1 year ago - the date we migrated to M365. It's disconcerting that MS has this much control over a LOCALLY installed application. This kind of thing should not be managed in anyway by cloud services, which I suspect is the issue and why no one can fix this except Microsoft themselves.

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-03-22T15:36:56+00:00

    Click on Change and you will get repair options. But the repair does not fix it.

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-03-22T15:30:33+00:00

    Thank You!

    YOU ARE A HERO!!!!!!!

    I just did this, and it was successful at restoring Recent (pre 3/20) Files and all Pinned Files.

    It also now successfully adds new items to Recent list.

    It seems back to normal.

    I appreciate your help, as you can see it will help out many others too!

    Have a great day

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