How to See Recent Documents in Windows 10

To make workflow easier, Windows gives you quick access to all recent documents. Here is how to see and open recent documents in Windows 10.

Every time you open a document in Windows 10, it will keep track of it in the Recent Documents section. As you can tell from the name itself, you can open your recent documents from this section. This makes it easy to access your last worked documents without having to scour through the file system.

For example, if you work with a lot of documents on a daily basis, having a quick and easy way to open recent documents is very helpful.

In this quick and simple guide, let me show how to see the recent documents and how to open them via the File Explorer or the Word application.

Jump to:

• Recent documents in File Explorer
• Recent documents in Word

See and Open Recent Documents in File Explorer

To see recent documents in File Explorer, follow these steps in Windows 10.

1. Open the File Explorer.
2. Click on the “Quick Access” option on the sidebar.
3. You will see the recent documents under the “Recent files” section on the right panel.
4. Along with recent documents, you will also see other files you’ve opened recently.

Detailed steps

1. Open the File Explorer. You can do that by pressing the “Windows Key + E” shortcut. Alternatively, you can also File Explorer by clicking on its icon on the taskbar.

2. On the left sidebar, click on the “Quick Access” option, Generally, you will see it at the top of the sidebar. This is the option that lists all recent documents in Windows.

3. On the right panel, you will see the recent documents under the “Recent files” section. If you cannot see the files, click on the “Recent files” heading to expand section and see the files.

One good thing about this section is that it also lists all the recent files, regardless of their extension, along with the recent documents.

If you don’t want files listed in Quick access, follow the “clear quick access in File Explorer” article.

See and Open Recent Documents in Word

If you are using Word, you can see recent documents in the Start menu or in the Word jumplist. Here’s how.

1. Open the Start menu.

2. Search for “Word” in the start menu.

3. You will see the recent word documents on the right panel.

4. Alternatively, if you’ve pinned word to your taskbar, right-click on it.

5. You will see your recent document under the “Recent” section of the jumplist.

In both the Start menu and the jumplist, Windows will show the recent 10 documents. If the document you are looking for is not in the recent documents list, it means that you’ve opened several other documents/files since then. If that’s the case, you have to manually find and open the document from File Explorer.

That is all. I hope that helps. If you are stuck or need some help, comment below and I will try to help as much as possible.