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Open Document Windows Changing Order

Anonymous
2020-09-11T13:58:45+00:00

I usually have several documents open at once, and I open them in a specific order based on preference and/or importance. I've been noticing that (usually after making changes to and saving one or more documents) Microsoft Word (or perhaps Windows 10 is the culprit) changes the order of the documents.

For instance, I have several numbered manuscripts that I'll switch between and keep open simultaneously, and after making changes to at least one manuscript, the order of the documents will have been rearranged. So, instead of being open in numerical order, manuscript #3 will be the first document, manuscript #2 will be the second, manuscript #4 will be the third, and manuscript #1 will be the last/fourth document open.

Now, I'm not referring to the pinned order of recent documents, as I know that is affected by whichever document was opened/saved last. I'm specifically referring to the stacked Microsoft Word icon, that when hovered over by my cursor, pops up with thumbnails of the open documents.

What could be causing this? And is there any setting I can change to prevent this?

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-09-11T16:19:31+00:00

    Well, that is certainly disappointing. I've noticed Excel does the same thing. Also, it doesn't strictly adhere to the order they were edited.

    In the example from the question, while manuscript #3 was the most recently edited document, manuscript #2 was not the second; manuscript #1 was the second most recently updated. Very curious that document windows just rearrange themselves will.

    It's just such a weird phenomenon, given that other programs do not do that. For instance, if I have multiple Google Chrome windows open, they stay in the order they were opened, rather than rearranging at random.

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-09-11T14:10:06+00:00

    If you edit a doc then the last one edited will be the first shown/indicated. Its not a fixed list

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-09-11T17:05:45+00:00

    Also, I'd like to clarify that my question wasn't regarding the pinned list of recent documents. It's about the thumbnails of open Word documents in the taskbar. Does that change your response at all?

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