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The task bar / start menu icons for Microsoft Word (from Microsoft Office 365 Business) stopped working properly all of a sudden. More specifically I'm having issues with the document list:

  • The pinned documents section is gone. It won't come back even if I pin new documents.
  • The recent documents section is stall. It doesn't display recent files any more and it shows documents I haven't opened in a long time.
  • When I click on a document I always get a prompt saying that the document is not available. However, right click menu items on the document do work.

Funnily, if I launch Word normally I get a 100% functional pinned and recent pane inside the program.

It's worth nothing that this is the only piece of software that exhibits this issue. Even other Office programs still work fine.

I ran the repair feature to no avail (both "quick" and the throrough "on-line" one). System File Checker tool found and fixed some issues but it didn't fix this.

This appears to be unique to my user profile (other users on the same PC do not have this problem).

Any idea of what's going on and how to fix it?

Update #1: Suddenly, it's happening in Excel too :-!

Update #2: Now icons are gone... Office is rotting slowly...

Missing icons

Álvaro González
  • 1,573

2 Answers2

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It got fixed for me after removing all files within:

  • %AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations

    Windows Explorer screenshot

I had to kill explorer.exe and get it restarted. I learnt about this location at Where is the list of pinned start menu and taskbar items stored in Windows 7.

This removes the list of pinned documents, but since it makes the feature start working again you can pin stuff back yourself.

Álvaro González
  • 1,573
0

Solution:

  • Not necessarily particular to version of Windows specifically, but my pinned files also stopped appearing in the taskbar-icon's pop-up menu for MS-Word, but not for the other Office products.

  • I discovered when launching Word (not opening a particular file, but opening its launcher-app so it open on the Home-Screen) and going to the "Recent" tab (next to "Pinned" and "Shared with me" tabs), that clearing all recent files, had one not always remaining in the list. Since opening it didn't work, it was clear that the original file was either not fully available anymore or that it has moved location.

  • I corrected by locating the file in its new folder and then opening it. If it hadn't existed anymore, I might have considered creating a new one with that same name. I then was able to remove it from the Recent-list once it was an accurate reference.

  • In Windows-Explorer, going to "C:\Users<UserName>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows", I did a right-click on the "Recent Items"-folder and selected "Clear Recent Items List" from the pop-up context menu.

  • That did the trick!

Daniel
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