An Easy Access for Often-Used Files in Office 2007

Q: I just started using Office 2007, and it contains a couple of things I can’t figure out. One, which I find most intriguing, is a pushpin. When I click on the Office icon to save a document, a list of Recent Documents appears, just like in Office 2003, but unlike the earlier Office, this one has an icon of a pushpin stationed next to each document. Do you know what they do? Are they just decorations?

A: No, they are real tools—an upgrade of Recent Documents that makes it much more handy—not quite a shortcut but more than just a listing under the Recent Documents heading.

Here’s how they work: Say you have some files you will need to access frequently for the next week or so. You don’t want to bother making a shortcut for them, but you don’t want to search around for them, either. That’s when you use a pushpin. To see the pushpin in operation, open a file—any file—just for this demonstration. Once it’s open, press the Office icon and a list of recently opened files will appear. To keep any of those files on the list, even if they haven’t recently been opened, just click on the pushpin to “tack” that file to the list. When you no longer need to quickly access the file, click the pushpin again and it will be unstuck from the list.

In case you didn’t know it, Office 2007 can be programmed to show as few as zero recent documents and as many as 50, up from a maximum of nine in Office 2003. To adjust the maximum size of the Recent Documents list, click on the Office icon and then cursor down to the lower right of the page to Word Options (or Excel Options, or whatever application you’re in) and then to Advanced and finally scroll down to Display, where you can make the adjustment.