Windows 10: Task Managerr intermittently does not show the list of open documents

The latest bugs in the latest updates from Microsoft have messed up one of THE VERY MOST USEFUL features of of Task Manager. Someone with a lot of documents open could, formerly, use Task Manager to choose a document to go to. When you have a lot of documents open, this is the best way to work. Please don't bother telling me alternative methods for doing this, I probably have been using computers longer than at least 95% of the tech support people and I know the best methods for jumping from document to document quickly.


(Incidentally, if you don't know that method for moving from document to document, you don't know much about Windows' functionality and how hard-working people operate when they have enough knowledge to work with a lot of open documents. It is AMAZING how little many so-called tech people know about actually WORKING with computers.)


The updates of the last 14 months have really made this function into a mess and even completely restoring the operating system to the factory software load doesn't prevent it from coming back when after the obligatory updates are blighted back onto the computer.


Now sometimes rather than list all the Word documents that are open, it often only lists "print host for" something or another, and, of course, the name of the program (Word). When it works properly, Task Manager lists Word as the app, and then all the open documents in alphabetical order -- an extremely useful feature, believe me, if you work with as many documents as I do. I have googled that exact phrase but nothing comes up that is relevant to this new Microsoft-created loss of functionality in Windows. If I close and reopen Task Manager, it sometimes functions properly, and other times repeats the same problem. Work that used to be possible with two mouse clicks now can turn into 6 - 8 mouse clicks and a lot of wasted time and loss of productivity, thanks to the updates since November 2017. I reinstalled the factory load at the end of December 2018, so the obligatory updates I got after doing that would be, presumably, updates that have corrected the bugs in the previous buggy updates, but this messing up of Task Manager functionality is still the same. The Update Speed is set to 'normal' (and a try of setting it to 'fast' made no difference). It is not "always on top"; rather, it's set to 'minimize when not in use'.


Does anyone have a clue how to fix this? If so, please tell me BUT PLEASE, NO MENTAL DRIBBLE -- NO "try this' "try that" "read this" "uninstall and reinstall and see if", please NO GUESSWORK, NO MENTAL DRIBBLE.


AND REMEMBER: DRIBBLE IS NOT HELP. If you are just giving out guesswork, as many times so-called "support" people do, at the very, very, very least please tell people from the outset that you are just guessing. Just because you are a volunteer doesn't mean you have a license to waste people's time with so-called answers that are just mental dribble. Being a volunteer is no excuse for anything -- if you don't have a useful answer, don't bother with guesswork unless you highlight from the outset that you are just guessing.

:)

 

Wrong "remove from list" document on word mobile.

Hi,

To further assist you with your concern about re-enabling files that were removed from the Recent Documents List in Word, we suggest to follow this steps:

• Click the FILE tab in the program.
• Click Options from the list on the left side of the screen.
• On the Word Options dialog box, click Advanced in the list of options on the left.
• On the Advanced screen, scroll down to the Display section. Select the value in the Show this number of Recent Documents edit box. You can choose to change the value to 0 to disable the list.
  
• When you open Word, or select the Open option in the program, there are no documents in your Recent Documents list.
• To re-enable the list, go back into the Word Options dialog box and enter the desired value (from 0 to 50, inclusive) in the Show this number of Recent Documents edit box on the Advanced screen. If any documents were previously displayed in the Recent Documents
  list, they are added to the list again.
  

We're just here if you have further questions.

Regards.

 

List of recent documents not showing Windows 10

You can make a list of recent documents appear in 2 ways in W10.

1. Left click over the Word icon in the task bar (task bar is at the bottom of your screen).

2. Click the start menu. Hover over the picture of the Word icon, and left click the mouse. A list of about 10 recent documents will appear.

Left clicking over the other icons in the task bar will give you a list of recent files open in those programs too (ie, if you have Acrobat there, browser list etc.).

 

Can't open documents

Hi Marilyn,



Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.



In order to narrow down the issue and provide appropriate troubleshooting steps, please reply with answers to the questions below.

1. Is it any specific document, a document type or all documents, you are unable to open?
   
2. What happens when you try to open the documents?
   
3. Do you get any error message while trying to open the documents?
   

We look forward for your reply.



Peer Samie

Microsoft Community-Moderator