Recent Files List

[Nevada]

In Office XP, the option to increase or decrease recent file listings was
grayed out. I thought when I upgraded to Office 2007 that this problem would
be fixed. It is not. This item is still grayed out and the info says that
the Administrator has disabled this command through group policy. As my PC
is a home PC, I am the Administrator and I do not recall disableing this
command. Any suggestions??

 

[garfield-n-odie [MVP]]

In the Windows registry, if the value of the NoRecentDocsHistory key in
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\
is set to binary 01 00 00 00, then change the value to binary 00 00 00 00.

 

[Nevada]

I had seen this solution in previous posts. When I used REGEDIT to go to
this registry entry, there was no "NoRecentDocsHistory" key. With Explorer
selected, I clicked on Edit/New/Key and added "NoRecentDocsHistory". Then I
selected "NoRecentDocsHistory" and clicked on Edit/New/Binary Value. I
renamed the new entry under Name, Type, Data to "NoRecentDocsHistory" and set
the Data value to 00 00 00 00. I then closed the reg editor and restarted
the computer. I verified that this new registry entry was, in fact, there.
The "Show this number of recent documents" item is still greyed out in Word
and Excel. The "My Recent Documents" item is still empty on the Start menu.
This feature used to work. Any other suggestions? Thanks.

 

[garfield-n-odie [MVP]]

Too bad you didn't originally mention having already seen this solution
in previous posts. Then I wouldn't have wasted my time suggesting it.
This is a Windows setting that Office just complies with, so the version
of Office doesn't matter. The NoRecentDocsHistory key should already be
there, because that's what makes the "Show this number of recent
documents" in Office applications grayed out. Make sure you're looking
in HKCU, not HKLM like some people do. This works for most people, so I
don't know what else to tell you.

 

[Nevada]

I continued to look at this issue in the Registry and I found that there were
two (2) HKCU/Software entries. The second one, lower down on the list,
actually contained the item that you referenced. The binary value was 01 and
I changed it to 00. The Recent Files List now works in Word and Excel. The
files still don't show on the Start Menu/My Recent Documents, but that is an
issue for another day.

Sorry I wasted your time but your solution did cause me to take several
looks at the registry which resulted in the successful fix.