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

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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
    2024-03-22T22:11:06+00:00

    On March 21, the same problem occurred for my Office Home and Student  standalone app. I stopped my subscription to MS 365 in 2021 and installed this app.

    On File -> Open,,there are no longer any pinned documents and my "Recent" documents are from 2021. The “Account” information shows connected services as “OneDrive -  Personal,” which fI do not use.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-03-22T21:18:35+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?

    Just FYI I do not run Office 365 but use stand alone MS Office 2021 Pro. Same issue with recent and pinned files no longer showing. Recently opened files do not show. My two systems are new (a few months) and run Win 11. On both computers I deleted OneDrive very soon after setup. Like all others issue just started (I assume March 20, 2024). Issue might be related to OneDrive but who knows. It isn't limited to Office 365 though.

    Oddly, my second computer does show 3 "recent" files: all three of them a few years old???

    Not holding my breath until this is fixed. Good to see some things never change. Microsoft still using customers to debug stuff.

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-03-22T19:31:56+00:00

    This hit or organization this week. MS adds a feature, users then use it & rely on it for years, and then...POOF. Is this what they call Artificial Intelligence? The user community is quite furious, lighting the torches and grabbing the pitchforks.

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-03-22T19:00:02+00:00

    Agree - thanks to all for posts regarding the issues and attempts to correct. For brevity - I'm having same issues. On a leap of faith, I'll assume Microsoft doesn't know what happened ;-) stay with me on this...

    What can we proactively do to ensure Microsoft is aware so they can provide a response? (1. yes, we know & don't care so deal with it; 2. no, we didn't know and here is a fix; 3. something else) As of yet, I have not seen anyone from MS post in this thread.

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