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Start menu app right-click pinned/recent Excel/Word file lists not showing

Anonymous
2025-04-24T09:21:37+00:00

Since yesterday, when I right click Excel or Word in my Start menu (W10 22H2, Office 365) I no longer get my (vital!) lists of pinned & recent files but instead the right-click dropdown offers options 'Unpin from Start/Resize/More/Uninstall' - how do I display my pinned/recent file lists again instead?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For business | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-04-25T02:06:36+00:00

    I have the exact same issue after this last Microsoft Update. However, the pinned list shows up if you open, say excel, and once it opens, right click on excel in the taskbar and the pinned items show up. This is the same for word as well. Why it got removed from the start menu right click, your guess is as good as mine. I haven't found an answer for it yet.

    As far as trying to pin items back to the start menu app, there is no option to do that. Even after manually opening several files, none of them show up like they used to in the start menu. Only when you right click on the app in the taskbar does the pinned and MRU list appear.

    Hopefully someone will find a fix for it or Microsoft can fix their update that they pushed causing this.

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-04-29T15:49:46+00:00

    John,

    You are welcome. I hope Microsoft will fix this and put the option back into the app from the start menu. I have tried another thing I will mention here. If you pin the app to the taskbar, then you can right-click and the pinned and recent items will show up like it did in the start menu.

    Again, I wish Microsoft would put this back the way it was instead of cluttering up the taskbar.

    Anyhow, everyone have a great day ! ! !

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  2. Anonymous
    2025-04-29T13:00:11+00:00

    Thanks Gene, really appreciate the tip about being able to right click the app in the taskbar to see the pinned items which I hadn't noticed!

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  3. Anonymous
    2025-04-24T15:38:28+00:00

    O365/Office when installed under a Win user admin account, and run from that admin account, auto logs in when the PC is started. There is no separate login for any component.

    Win search for Word > Resulting shortcut > Rt click > Pin to task bar > start Word from that shortcut (hover mouse over the shortcut gives access to the 10 most recent docs)

    Same for other core components.

    Start eg Word open an old doc via recents/search

    Rarely any need to access OneDrive itself.

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