If you use Microsoft Word, you have probably seen the list of documents that appear at the bottom of the File menu. These are the Word documents that you’ve recently opened. It offers a quick way for you to access files (similar to the My Recent Documents on the Windows XP Start Menu).

By default, Word 2002 will maintain a list of four recently opened documents. If you like this feature, you can leave it enabled. Conversely, you can also disable it from the Options dialog box. Simply click Options from the Tools menu within Word. Select the General tab if it is not the active tab, and clear the check beside the Recently used file list option. Click OK. The documents will not longer appear on the File menu.

If you like this feature of Word, you can also increase the number of documents that are stored in the list. Using the steps outlined above, simply increase the number beside the Recently used file list option. Word 2002 can store a maximum of nine documents in the recently used file list.