Upon launching an application, receiving a prompt to pick up right where you left can be convenient and Microsoft’s Office suite implements a feature similar to this with their Recent list. This feature allows users to quickly access documents, spreadsheets or presentations they were working on with a single click.

If required, users can also find the exact storage location of the file detailed under the file name.

While convenient, every file a user opens lands here; making for a crowded mess, which rather than assist can end up being distracting or not helpful in certain situations.

Hence, this article lists steps you need to follow to remove one or more items from Recent list or disable the feature entirely.

The listed steps are applicable in Word 2019, Excel 2019 and PowerPoint 2019.

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How to clear one item at a time?

Open Word, PowerPoint or Excel on your device and follow the steps listed below to remove a single document from the ‘Recent’ list.

Step 1: Click on the Home tab.

Step 2: Locate a file you want to clear from the list and right-click on it; from the menu that appears, select Remove from list.

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How to clear entire list at once?

Open Word, PowerPoint or Excel on your device and follow the steps listed below to clear the entire ‘Recent’ list.

Step 1: Click on the Open tab.

Step 2: Pin any files you deem important (and would want to keep) by clicking on the pin icon.

Step 3: Now right-click on any file within Recent and click on Clear unpinned items.

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How to disable Recent List?

Open Word, PowerPoint or Excel on your device and follow the steps listed below to disable the ‘Recent’ list.

Step 1: Select the Options tab in the lower-left corner of your screen.

Step 2: Within the dialogue box that appears click on Advanced and scroll down to the Display subsection.

Step 3: Change Show the number of Recent Documents to zero and click on OK.

To bring the Recents list back; repeat Steps 1 and 2 and change the value to any number of files you wish to view.

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