Brilliant. Another day wasted going backwards with fkg PC issues. Installed some Windows update before Christmas that seemed for some reason to kill my internet. Assumed it was an Edge update that wasn't sitting well but can neither uninstall anything related (without losing my history, sessions etc.) or grab a new patch (doesn't exist). Also plugged in a Bluetooth adapter and let Windows run its driver install, so not sure if that's maybe done something. I did try reverting to a previous restore point but it couldn't complete as it said an antivirus programme was blocking access to a file. Tried disabling those and reverting, but nothing. Tried restoring again but now the option of going back to the 24th was missing and only today's restore point was available so gave up with that. I tried therefore uninstalling a couple of bits anyway (just for sake of tidying up a bit) and got rid of PowerPoint (unused) and Outlook (unused) using Revo Uninstaller, being careful to leave my Office install untouched - I appear to have my Pro Plus 2010 install showing as separate to the new Office 365 web-based rubbish that looks like it might have been bundled with Win 10. The 365 apps show up separately with different icons and install locations. Having done that, I then lost my Excel and Word taskbar icons and could no longer find them in my programs list. The Revo shot below originally showed a zero byte install of my Office (which was how PowerPoint and Outlook were showing beforehand) which I find strange and asking Revo to repair the Office 2010 install says it's now corrupt (plus it ignores the installation DVD in the drive). However, if I go to the recent apps list in the Start Menu box as below, Excel 2010 shows up (top right) and will also open (note it is not the icon on the left, this is the new 365 version), plus it can be pinned back to the taskbar; searching for Word in the same screen brings the 2010 version of that back as well and that has the recent docs list shown upon opening, which is what I'm after. But now right-clicking the taskbar icons for either doesn't bring back my recently-used file history, which I do need to go through for something. So have I now lost my recent files list etc. or is there a log entry somewhere I can reactivate? And do I actually need to repair the Office 2010 install at all? Grateful for any assistance because I've lost a day and am getting cross!
So, you uninstalled Office 365 and then lost the Excel and Word taskbars, right? If so, (pls forgive me if I'm not understanding this correctly) that might be the reason why Revo deemed the Office 2010 install as corrupted. It might give "precedence" to the 365 version over the one you have on the DVD. I don't have experience with this exact issue, but perhaps the OS itself was "tracking" only the 365 version, hence why it seems like you've never opened Excel before? Apologies that I can't share a solution from my personal experience, but that is due to the fact that we're using Google Workspace mostly. However, we also have an offline file management system in place which is something that could prove useful to you as well (at the moment we are using FileCenter). In short: software that can quickly hone in on a document not only by its name by also by its type, creation date, content (thanks to OCR), etc. We rely on such systems a lot for finding invoices, editing PDF files, and simply organizing the files in the first place. I know this doesn't "fix" your issue, but it can certainly shield you from such annoyances in the future...
Perhaps something in the following links may be of use? I think Office 2010 is 'version 14', when looking for the MRU list in the registry entry. https://www.msofficeforums.com/office/35227-recent-files-list-not-showing-word-excel.html https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/29015480/Excel-2016-lost-MRU-list.html
Cheers both . Am a bit tied up with a few issues at the moment but will have a read through and reply...
