recent documents in 2013

[franklekens]

My second unpleasant surprise in the new Office 2013 interface: the list of recent documents is no longer accessible with a single click. Or am I overlooking something? Please say I do.

The list now seems to be tucked away under the "open" option of the "start screen".
The start screen is accessible with a single click, but if you already have an open document, you go to the "info" option there, and first have to click (I don't see any way to get there with keyboard navigation) "open" before you get the recent documents list.

Gone is the dropdown menu next to the "open" button of Office 2003 and earlier, and gone is the extensive menu that popped out at the microsoft office button at the top left corner of Office 2007 and (I think) Office 2010.



Is there really no way of getting back single click access to the recent file list?
The only approximation I see is right clicking the Word button on the Windows taskbar. Strangely, the short list of recent documents there will only display associated files. If you've opened, say, a text file with an unknown extension, it doesn't show up there.

[Stefan Blom]

If you mean the recent documents list in Windows, it can't be dealt with from within Word, I'm afraid.

You can do the following from within Word: Click File tab | Options. In the Advanced category, click to select "Quickly access this number of Recent Documents" and click OK; you will see the specified number of recent files at the bottom of the File tab.

[franklekens]

No, I meant the list in Office.
Thanks, I'd forgotten that option. That helps.

[Stefan Blom]

I'm glad I could help!

Frankly, I had a hard time finding the option, because it was moved to the Options dialog box in Word 2013. :-)

In Office 2010, you could reach it via File tab | Recent.

[eNGiNe]

Does alt+F, R still help in 2013?

[franklekens]

This took some figuring out, because those ALT-codes are language dependent! (It's basically: ALT activates keyboard navigation in the menu/ribbon, and the letter is the highlighted letter of the command you want to give: but those differ from language to language.)

But yes, ALT-F (or ALT-B in my Dutch language version) takes you to the File tab of the ribbon, which has now been turned into the start screen. And R then activates the Recent Document list (where very document is assigned a number you can type to open that document).
Thanks for the reminder.

[Stefan Blom]

Yes, pressing the Alt key displays accelerator keys, and these are indeed language-specific.