Weekly Computer Tip # 246
9 October 2008

Pin a file on the Recent Documents list
(Office 2007)

See? Two weeks in a row! Even a day early! So enough already about the missing weeks!! (Or rather: thanks to all of you who emailed to express your worry about the tips having been scrapped.)

Today's tip is written for Access 2007, Excel 2007, PowerPoint 2007, and Word 2007 users only, so if you are still using the old version you can look away now. (Or better: read the bonus tip in the last paragraph.)

As you are no doubt aware, in Office 2007 the equivalent of the old File menu is the big, round blob in the top left corner of the program. It's called the Office button and the content is bigger and (supposed to be) easier to read than the old menu. On the right hand side it displays a list of the documents you recently used, so that you can open those quickly. When you work with new files the older links eventually disappear once you've reached the maximum number that are kept on the list. (You can change the default number, but that would make a great future tip so I'll hold that for now if that's OK.) So why not pin a file permanently on the Recent Documents list?

Here's how:

1. Click the Microsoft Office Button. (The big blob in the left hand top corner.)
2. Click the grey pin to the right of the document you want to keep.

The colour of the pin changes to green and you can simply click it again to "unpin" it. A bit like pinning a program at the top of the Start menu so that it's displayed in the area above the separator line on the Start menu. Don't know how? Simply right-click the program (from the Start menu, in Windows Explorer, in My Computer, or on the desktop) and click Pin to Start menu.

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