At last, there's a way to clear MS Office 'Recent Files' list in one step

TidBITS Talk
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MS Office on WINDOWS has apparently a command to clear all of the RECENT FILES list in one go. But not on macOS. MS support only ever gives you elaborate instructions how to clear these entries one by one, usually phrased in a way that is quite patronising.

Like many people, I think it’s essential that nobody can easily see which documents I recently worked on, this long list is also simply in the way for myself.

Somebody has now figured out a way how to clear the list in one go, already two years old, but I only found it today. Clear MS Office Recent File list in one go on Mac
I studied the commands, tried it and it worked fine on my MS Office 2021

Enjoy!

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Do other people use your computer? If so, I would suggest creating a separate login account for each of them (and a guest account for infrequent users).

This history is stored on per-user basis. If you log-out from your account, and have others log-in using their accounts, then this won’t be a problem.

If you need someone to open one of your files, you can put the file in a shared folder (e.g., ~/Public), so they can access it from their own account.

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Not a bad suggestion, but if the other person needs to be able to use MS Office, make sure that your Microsoft license supports another user account.

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That solution seems a bit complex. Also the Russian (?) version at the foot of the page is a concern.

There is an MS Support suggestion here:

In brief:
… if you want to clear Recents stored on your disk, follow these steps:

  1. Locate the File:
  • While holding down the Option key, click on the Go menu (in the macOS menu).
  • Choose Library.
  • Look in ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word/Data/Library/Preferences/.
  1. Drag the File to Your Desktop:
  • Find com.microsoft.Word.securebookmarks.plist.
  • Drag it to your desktop. This action deletes the Recents that are stored on your disk.

––----
I haven’t tried it (and it might not work with recent versions) but it seems to make sense removing the plist file

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Interesting. Note, however, that the folder name is presented differently in the Finder. For instance, the com.microsoft.Word folder (in your path) appears as “Microsoft Word” in the Finder, complete with a custom icon.

But I do see the folder, along with several similar ones for other Microsoft apps. From the ~/Library/Containers folder:

$ find . -name 'com.microsoft*.securebookmarks.plist'

./com.microsoft.Powerpoint/Data/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Powerpoint.securebookmarks.plist
./com.microsoft.Word/Data/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Word.securebookmarks.plist
./com.microsoft.Excel/Data/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Excel.securebookmarks.plist
./com.microsoft.Outlook/Data/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Outlook.securebookmarks.plist

Looking at the contents (QuickLook in the Finder, or plutil -p filename.plist | less), I see 140 entires for Word, going back to 2020 (based on the kLastUsedDateKey field). Which is pretty interesting because the app only shows 21 files, going back to April 2025.

So why the difference? Maybe the app only shows those files that still exist in the logged location? A lot of those files were deleted. And I saw many files listed in multiple locations.

I suspect deleting these files may work to purge your history. Just be sure to make a backup copy. And make sure no Office apps are running when you touch them.

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I’ve run into this, where I have to laboriously Remove from Recent hundreds of documents, one at a time. Ugh.

Why? It is because I don’t want my home Word and Excel’s Recent list to get flooded with documents I have viewed at work.

It theory this should only happen if you have the work SharePoint or OneDrive as a “connected service”. But there’s a bug in Office: if you connect Outlook at home to a work Exchange account, then all your documents you use at work leak into the home Office apps.

I’ve demonstrated this to Microsoft, and they agree it is an egregious bug, but they won’t fix it because I’m Not My Company, and therefore I’m not allowed to report business related bugs.

Anyway, there’s a way to stop it from happening. But I’m not going to post the solution in public. Microsoft already re-broke it once, and I’m afraid if I say how to stop it now, they’ll “fix” that also.

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Maybe use Activity Monitor to close down any MS background tasks as a first step?

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This is proving to be more interesting than I initially thought.
Can we first agree that there are valid reasons why someone might want to clear the ‘Recent files’ list? Suggesting that completely different working methods would eliminate the need to do so is, sorry, a moot point.

I also don’t think instructions in the Russian language are a concern.
The instructions start with SQLite, an open-source relational database engine that has been part of macOS since 2005.

The commands used are standard SQL queries. They do nothing more than select all records with a path entry and delete only these records.

The command does not contact any hidden servers or perform any other unusual actions. It does successfully clear the Recent Files with one command for all MSO apps.

The alternative solution that @mpainesyd found reveals yet another oddity in MS Office.
We’re looking at Secure Bookmarks, but what are they, and why does deleting them also delete the recent files list? Has anybody tested this yet?

Claude says:

Secure Bookmarks records security-scoped bookmarks — a macOS sandboxing mechanism that allows sandboxed apps like Word to persistently access files and folders outside their sandbox container, even across app restarts.

What’s inside it:
Encoded references to files and folders that the user has previously granted Word access to (e.g., by opening or saving a file via a dialog)
The bookmarks are binary-encoded and opaque — they contain the file path, volume info, and security permissions, but aren’t human-readable as plain text
Timestamps and metadata about when access was granted

Why it exists:
macOS’s App Sandbox requires apps to “re-earn” access to files outside their container each session — unless a secure bookmark is saved. Word stores these bookmarks in this plist so it can silently re-access recently used documents without prompting you every time.

In practice, this means:
If you’ve ever opened a file from your Desktop, Downloads, or a network share in Word, a bookmark to that location is likely recorded here. Deleting this file forces Word to re-request access to those locations, which can sometimes fix permission-related bugs (e.g., Word complaining it can’t save to a location it previously could).

A typical entry in the PLIST file looks like this (anonymised and w/ minor syntax errors to allow posting this):

< key > file:///Users/ANON/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Mail%20Downloads/F80E78BE-E398-4940-ACCF-40F0ANOSNF6E/ANON_Drawings_Nov_2025.docx

  <key>kBookmarkDataKey</key>

  <data>

  Ym9vazAEAAAAAAUQQAAAAGTTxBWimOzWakFVUIl0fvhBDq3I8ZCMdDgO4H5M

  OKMxAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABADAAAEAAAAAwMAAAAIACgFAAAAAQEAAFVz

  ZXJzAAAAAwAAAAEBAABtaG0ABwAAAAEBAABMaWJyYXJ5AAoAAAABAQAAQ29u

  dGFpbmVycwAADgAAAAEBAABjb20uYXBwbGUubWFpbAAABAAAAAEBAABEYXRh

  DgAAAAEBAABNYWlsIERvd25sb2FkcwAAJAAAAAEBAABGODBFNzhCRS1FMzk4

  LTQ5NDAtQUNDRi00MEYwQ0IzQTdGNkUkAAAAAQEAAFNpZG1vdXRoX0RyYXdp

  bmdzX05vdmVtYmVyXzIwMjUuZG9jeCgAAAABBgAAEAAAACAAAAAsAAAAPAAA

  AFAAAABoAAAALAAAAHQAAACMAAAAuAAAAAgAAAAEAwAAL0MAAAAAAAAIAAAA

  BAMAAFYfB ANONANONANONANONANONAAJAAAAAEBAAAyNDRCRjI0NS1CMTA0LTQ3

  N0ItQUM5NC0zREUzNDIyNjU2NDgYAAAAAQIAAIEAAAABAAAA7xMAAAEAAAAA

  AAAAAAAAAAEAAAABAQAALwAAAAAAAAABBQAALwAAAAEBAABOU1VSTEJvb2tt

  YXJrUXVhcmFudGluZU1vdW50ZWROZXR3b3JrVm9sdW1lc0tleQDYAAAA/v//

  /wEAAAAAAAAAEQAAAANONANONANONANONANONAAAAAABAQAAD0AQAA

  AAAAAEAQAADkAQAAAAAAAAIgAADEAgAAAAAAAAUgAAAwAgAAAAAAABAgAABA

  AgAAAAAAABEgAAB4AgAAAAAAABIgAABYAgAAAAAAABMgAABoAgAAAAAAACAg

  AACkAgAAAAAAADAgAADQAgAAAAAAAAHAAAAUAgAAAAAAABHAAAAgAAAAAAAA

  ABLAAAAkAgAAAAAAABDQAAAEAAAAAAAAANgCAIDQAgAAAAAAAA==

  </data>

  <key>kLastUsedDateKey</key>

  <date>2025-12-23T12:37:27Z</date>

  <key>kUUIDKey</key>

  <string>19FE6F38-C342-47F4-A4AE-330B12E8CFD3</string>

There are almost 200 such entries, including documents I have received as email attachments years back or projects that I completed many years ago, many more than the recent files list.

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It is surprising. I haven’t really looked into the subtleties, but it is interesting that there doesn’t appear to be a simple way to clear all “Recent Files” entries, rather than going through them one-by-one.

On the Mac I use for consulting projects, using the “More…” option in “Open Recent Files” to yield links to documents that are years old. Even revealing the document titles could present a breach of confidentiality. Worse, through that mechanism, I found that I still have OneDrive access to a client’s corporate shared drive that I should have been removed from years ago. On the bright side, I may be able to sell them on the idea of a corporate security review.