When you open Microsoft Excel, or click on the “File” menu, you are greeted with the “Start” screen. A prominent feature of this screen is the “Recent” list, which displays the names, file paths, and last-opened timestamps of all the spreadsheets you have accessed recently. While convenient for picking up where you left off, this list can be a significant privacy risk if you share a computer, or if you frequently present your screen during Zoom meetings. To protect your confidentiality, you can configure Excel to completely disable this history list.
How to Disable the Recent Files List
To remove the list, we need to instruct Excel to remember exactly “zero” recent files.
- Open Microsoft Excel.
- Click on the File tab in the top-left corner.
- Look at the bottom of the left-hand blue sidebar and click on Options. (You may need to click ‘More…’ to see it).
- In the “Excel Options” window that appears, click on Advanced in the left-hand menu pane.
- Scroll down the main window until you locate the Display section.
- Find the setting labelled Show this number of Recent Workbooks:.
- By default, this is usually set to 50. Highlight the number and type 0 (zero).
- Optional but recommended: Just below it, find the setting for Show this number of unpinned Recent Folders: and change that to 0 as well.
- Click the OK button at the bottom of the window.
The Result
The change takes effect immediately. If you click on File > Open, or look at the Start screen, the “Recent” section will be completely empty. Because the software is now instructed to remember zero files, it will no longer track your activity moving forward.
Note: This setting applies locally to Excel on your specific machine. If you open files from OneDrive or SharePoint, your activity may still be visible in the Microsoft 365 web portal or the Windows “Quick Access” menu unless you clear your history in those specific locations as well.