Office 2007 - "Show this number of Recent Documents" grayed out

[Q Jones]

Having problem with Office 2007. I installed it about a month ago and was fine until yesterday. Today morning when I launched Excel I found that there are no files showing up in recent documents. I thought to make it work from the settings but surprisingly the option to set number of files to be displayed in recent documents is grayed out.

I tried opening few other office applications and same result in all of them. I don’t know why it happened all of a suddenly. As per change I had installed just MRU Office documents a week ago but removed it the next day as I dint found it of any use.

Can you guys please let me know how can I fix my Office’s recent documents?

[austin_it]

Well you can do it by making a small change in the registry. But I’ll recommend you do it only if you have had worked with registries before or a small mistake in registry can damage your system.

Go to Start > Run > Type regedit. Press Enter
Now navigate to the following location
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
Here you will find a DWord key named “NoRecentDocsHistory” in the right pane.
Double click the same and change its value to ‘0’

That’s it. Now reboot the system to effect the changes and start office applications. Hopefully your Recent docs would be working now.

[Katherina]

Well that’s good tips buddy but instead of playing with registry you guys can also fix the problem using Microsoft’s TweakUI. Download and install the same. Once done launch it and click on Explorer. On the settings page you will get a checkbox for ‘Maintain document history’. Just check this box and you are done. I have tried this for Excel and Word and it worked. I am not sure whether it works for other office application.