Word keeps track of documents you've recently opened, storing them on the File tab menu in Word 2010, and on the Office button menu in Word 2007. A common question I get is how to get rid of those files on the list.

As you would expect, the method for removing the recently-opened documents differs between Word 2010 and Word 2007.

Word 2010

It's easy to remove unwanted recent documents from Word 2010: Simply point the mouse at the file's icon and right-click. From the menu that appears, choose Remove From List.

You can also choose the command Clear Unpinned Documents (shown above) to pretty much zero-out the entire list of documents.

Word 2007

Follow these steps to remove an unwanted file from the Office button menu in Word 2007:

Click the Office Button to display the menu.

Click the Word Options button.

The Word Options window appears.

From the left side of the Word Options window, choose Advanced

On the right side of the window, in the Display area, set the number of Recent Documents to zero.

The full command name is "Show this number of Recent Documents." It may say 17 (as it did on my PC) now, or some other number. Change the value to zero.

Click the OK button.

Now check the Office button menu. There should be no files listed. (Yes, the side affect here is that all files will be removed from the list.)

To reset the value back to 17, or whatever value you prefer, repeat these steps.

Yeah, that's pretty much how it works: To remove a single file you have to delete them all. This feature was fixed in Word 2010, as described above. If it truly bugs you, then it's a valid reason to upgrade.