Recently viewed documents

[Gregg M]

Hi, I recently downloaded Office Home and Student 2007 on my two computers
(identical). No problem with the first one, however on the second computer,
Word will not generate a list of recently viewed documents. When I go to
Word Options - Advanced - Display, the option for Recently Viewed Documents
is grayed out, and the "I" for Information says this has been disabled by the
Administrator. I am the Administrator, and trust me, I did not disable this
option.

The question I have now is, is there a simple way to enable this option?

Thank you very much

 

[Jay Freedman]

If you've used TweakUI or a similar hack to turn off the Recent Documents list
in the Windows Start menu, that also affects the Office lists. See
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=284896.

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

 

[DanL]

Jay:
I also have the identical problem, but do not have Tweak IU. When I tried
the KB article you reference, and in the regedit mode, I found all the
directories except for the last one listed (Explorer), so that didn't work.

Do you have any other suggestions?

Dan

 

[Gregg M]

If you've used TweakUI or a similar hack to turn off the Recent Documents list
in the Windows Start menu, that also affects the Office lists. See
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=284896.

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

Thanks, Jay. I also don't have TweakUI, like DanL. I would also like to
hear if there are any other options.
Thanks again.
Gregg M

 

[DanL]

Gregg:
I did a search and found this site.
http://www.winvistaclub.com/Ultimate_Windows_Tweaker.html
I figured if something tweaked my settings, I should untweak them (at the
risk of sounding too technical <g>). This installed without problem on my
Vista machine and seemingly allowed me to re-set the command to show my
recent documents. It also has some other neat tweaks and is free. So far,
it's working. I'll test it for a day or two and will post any negative
results.

Hope this helps?

 

[Jay Freedman]

There's a completely different story in an old article about Office 2000 at
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ork2000/HA011383841033.aspx. Although doesn't
apply to Office 2007, it led me to something similar. Look for the registry key

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\File MRU

If it doesn't exist, try creating it (right-click > New > Key). On the right
side of the window, right-click and choose New > DWORD Value. Name the value Max
Display (with a space between the words) and set its value to a decimal value
between 4 and 50. Try using Word to open documents, to see if the MRU shows up.

If the problem is still there,
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa372139.aspx indicates that there's
another policy key that might be involved, if it exists:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Comdlg32

with a value named NoFileMru. However, it isn't likely that this is the case,
because that key controls the "common dialog box library" and Office 2007
doesn't use that library.

 

[DanL]

Well, the tweaker just worked for a day, keeping the recently used files.
This morning all my Office 2007 apps were again blank for this feature, SO NO
JOY FOR MY UNTWEAKING IDEA.

I will next try Jay's registry idea expressed above.

I'd sure like to know what caused this issue, as the problem didn't exist
until 2 weeks ago or so.

 

[DanL]

Jay;
I really appreciate your inputs! I do have the directory "File MRU", however
there already is an entry on the right side: "Default /REG SZ/value not set"
and I cannot create the entry you suggest and am not sure what to do next.
Would you bear with an old man an offer further counsel?

 

[Jay Freedman]

Did you look for the Comdlg32 key mentioned below?

If that doesn't pan out, I'm completely out of suggestions.

 

[DanL]

Jay:
I did go there, but saw no entry and am a bit nervous about mucking about in
there. I do appreciate your efforts and only hope Msft can come up with a fix
of some sort. It's a really nice feature and I do miss it.

 

[DanL]

Gentlemen:
With thanks to the Tech Support staff at Smart Computing magazine, I simply
went to Control panel/Add-remove/Change and then repaired the Office
installation using the "Repair" command. All is back to normal. They also
recommended downloading SP2 which i did and the world is right again.