MRU is a list of Most Recently Used files. We see that list in File – Open –Recent documents. As you know, this list shows the latest documents opened by you. Documents opened earlier move down in the list and eventually get removed when more files are opened. However, Office allows you to explicitly remove a particular item from the MRU list. Right click on any item and choose Remove from List.
The question is, why would you want to do that? Anyway the file will get flushed from the list soon. The answer is not so obvious. There are many practical scenarios where this is very useful. I am not going to explain each scenario. Just a list.
- You opened a local file and stored it on OneDrive. Now to files are seen in MRU. I want to remove the local file to avoid editing it accidentally.
- I am presenting to customer X. I also presented to the competitor Y just yesterday. I want to remove files related to customer Y.
- I opened XLS file, saved it as XLSX. This way Compatibility Mode is removed and I can use all the new features. Now, I do not want to accidentally open the XLS file and confuse myself.
- I am editing a complex file. I keep saving versions. When I save the latest version, I want to remove the entry of the older version from MRU to avoid confusion
If you can think of more usage scenarios, do post it as comments.
