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
    2024-03-21T10:46:11+00:00

    Hi Kevin D I am an Independent Advisor, trying to help other users in the Community with my experience in Microsoft products. Please note that I am a user like you and don't work directly for Microsoft. I am sorry to hear that you are experiencing this issue and I hope that the following suggestion will work in your case. Can you please open Windows Explorer and past the link below? C:\Users%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Office You should see the Recent folder and perhaps you can open the documents from there as a workaround until the recent documents show up in Word and Excel again. Please let me know if that helped. Regards Casper

    Thanks Casper, that does work as a temporary workaround for the Recent files (but not Pinned files), but hopefully someone here can offer a permanent solution.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-03-21T12:25:13+00:00

    I did some research on this. Learned this.

    1. This problem has been showing up for years.
    2. The Microsoft advice is just try this and try that. The problem isn't solved.
    3. There are these independent advisors who post stuff that isn't useful.
    4. It doesn't appear that the problem is solved in the forums.

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-03-21T12:27:28+00:00

    I restarted the computer and that doesn't work.

    You probably tried that, but I am putting it here for the record.

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-03-21T12:35:59+00:00

    I ran the Office Repair, and selected the Quick Repair and that didn't work. I didn't select the online repair.

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