Right-click Word but doesn't find "recents"

[Howard Brazee]

When I have Word or Excel in my dock and I right click it to "Show Recents", I get "No Available Windows". If I open the application, I see a bunch of recents.
When I right-click on LibreOffice in my dock, lots of recents are listed, I don't even have to click on "Show Recents".

I used to see recents right-clicking Word or Excel, but not anymore.

Any idea why it doesn't show them anymore?

 

[MacsBug]

Hi Howard,

Sorry for the delay on this. I wanted to test a few scenarios and see if I can duplicate this, and I was able to on Ventura. If you have a different version of the macOS the instructions may be slightly different, but you should be able to figure it out.

1. Quit Excel and Word if they are running

2. Open System Preferences

3. Select Desktop & Dock

4. Next to Recent documents, applications, and servers use the pulldown menu change this to 10 or more

5. You can either restart your Mac, or use the terminal and run the following command killall Dock

6. Launch Word or Excel and your recents should show back up

 

[Howard Brazee]

It was already at 10. And when I click on LibreOffice or BBEdit, I see 10 items. I wonder if there is some confusion between having two applications that open Office documents.

 

[MacsBug]

If you are opening the documents in Word or Excel, they should be in the recent list.

Try changing the recent documents to None, restarting the Dock, then change it back to 10 and restart the Dock again. Also, make sure that Word and Excel are not running while you do this.

 

[Howard Brazee]

I wasn't running Excel nor Word, and I changed it to "none" and rebooted. When I returned, I still could see 10 in LibreOffice and none in Word. I set it back to 10, ran Word on a document and checked. Still none showed up. I did notice that my General/Startup Items include "Microsoft AutoUpdate" and "Microsoft Office Licencing". I changed the amount to 15, killed the dock, and opened an item in BBedit, Word, and LibreOffice. Then looked at their Recents. LibreOffice & BBEdit both showed 10 items, Office none.

 

[MacsBug]

Have you tried to clear recents in both Word and Excel, and see if the dock repopulates after that?

 

[Howard Brazee]

I'm not finding how to do that.

 

[MacsBug]

You would do this in word bu going under the Word menu, recent itnmes and select More. (Or hit Command Shift O). Then you need ti right click on each item to remove them.

Something I would try before doing this though is to remove the Office icons from the Dock. Reinstall Office, and then put the icons back in the Dock.

 

[Howard Brazee]

I removed them. I counted 16, but guess it must have been 15, because that's the setting I had. Then I opened a document and closed Word. I still don't see any recent documents when I right-click Word in the dock, but it shows up as a recent document after I open Word.