This question applies across all Office apps: WORD, EXCEL, POWERPOINT.

About a week ago, I noticed that the number of recent documents had suddenly expanded way beyond the control number of 3 I had set in OPTIONS. And no matter how many times I kept clearing them, they keep coming back. The only way to stop them is to set the options value to 0. This was not happening until it started approximately a week ago. What changed? What is causing this? And how do I fix it? Thank you.