"Last files used" is greyed out. How to restore?

[BobNelsonFrance]

In Word (Office 2003, XP SP2), "Tools - Options - General - Last files used"
is greyed out. I cannot type in the number of recent files I want to see in
the Files menu. No recent files appear in the Files menu.

The grey-out happened a few days ago. The "Last files used" had been set at
9, and each time I closed a file, the list in the Files menu shortened by one
until none were left.

It may or may not be relevant to note that "Update paging in background" is
also greyed out.

There may be discrepancies between the vocabulary I'm using here and the
English-language equivalents. I actually use a French-language version, so
I'm translating the commands here.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

This is usually a result of using TweakUI (or something similar) to suppress
the MRU list on the Windows Start menu.

 

[BobNelsonFrance]

To Suzanne Barnhill:

Thanks for the suggestion. I am in fact using a registry cleaner, and
perhaps it was a bit aggressive the last time. Any idea how to restore the
function? (Also now missing from Excel, confirming that the problem is at a
higher level than Word.)

While I have you -- I recently got some very useful assistance from your
excellent site. I looked for a mailto: link to send you a word of
appreciation, but I understand your not wanting unsollicited email... we get
more than enough already!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I'm afraid I don't know how to deal with the effects of a Registry cleaner,
but we have definitely had reports of these causing problems.

While I have you -- I recently got some very useful assistance from your
excellent site. I looked for a mailto: link to send you a word of
appreciation, but I understand your not wanting unsollicited email... we get
more than enough already!

There's a Webmaster link on the home page of the site, as well as a link to
my business Web page. You can also email direct in response to any post
here, as I don't use a munged email address (yes, I get spam).

 

[Jay Freedman]

Bob, the information you need is buried in the KnowledgeBase article
at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=284896.

Using regedit.exe, open the registry key
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

On the right side of the editor, double-click the NoRecentDocsHistory
item and change its value to 0 (that is, the number zero).
Alternatively, you can just click NoRecentDocsHistory and press the
Delete key, then answer yes when prompted. That will take care of the
recently used files list -- you may have to restart Word to make it
take effect.

The background repagination setting is always checked and grayed out
when you're in Print Layout view, because that view requires constant
repagination. If you switch to Normal view, then the setting should be
enabled.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

 

[BobNelsonFrance]

Problem solved! Thanks very much for you kind assistance, Jay.