Have you recently created an important file on your Windows 10/11 PC but are not sure where you saved it? Do you not remember the file name of a recently saved file? Want to view all recently saved files? In this guide, we will show you how to view all recently saved files in Windows 10/11.
You do not need to install or use third-party software to view recently saved files. File Explorer can do this for you.
The File Explorer can be used to view recently saved photos, Word and Excel documents, and other type of files that you created on your PC. There are actually multiple ways in Windows 10/11 to view recently saved/created files.
Method 1 – View recently saved files via File Explorer
Method 2 – View recently saved files using search
Method 3 – View recently saved Word/Excel documents
Method 4 – View recently saved Notepad files
Method 1 of 4
View recently saved files using Quick Access In Windows 10/11
Note that files downloaded from the internet with the help of a browser do not show up in File Explorer Quick Access. You need to open up the Downloads folder and sort files by Date modified to view recently downloaded files.
Apart from downloaded files, you cannot view this method to view files transferred from an external drive to your PC unless you accessed those files after transferring them to your Windows 10 computer. If that is the case, please refer to the directions in Method 2.
Step 1: Open the File Explorer either by clicking on its icon on the taskbar or using the Windows logo + E keyboard shortcut.
Step 2: If the File Explorer opens to Quick Access (Windows 10) or Home (Windows 11), you can see the recently saved files in the Recent files (Windows 10) or Recent (Windows 11) section, which appears below the Frequent folders section. The Recent files section shows up to 20 recently saved files.
NOTE: If the File Explorer opens to This PC on your computer, click on the Quick Access (Windows 10) or Home (Windows 11) option located in the navigation pane (left-pane) to switch to Quick Access/Home.
Method 2 of 4
View recently saved files using File Explorer search
Step 1: Open the File Explorer and navigate to This PC.
Step 2: In the search box, type the following syntax by making appropriate changes to the date.
modified:4/24/2021 .. 4/28/2021
In the above example, we are searching for files created/modified between 24th and 28th of April. You can change these days as per your requirement.
If you hit the Enter key after typing the above syntax, Windows 10/11 will search for all files that were modified in that date range. This should help you find the files modified in that range.
Method 3 of 4
View recently saved Word or Excel document in Windows 10/11
Step 1: Open the Office Word or Excel program.
Step 2: Right-click on the Word/Excel icon on the taskbar to view recently saved/created/closed Word/Excel documents. The list (called Jump list) displays up to 10 recent documents. To view more recent files in the Jump list, refer to our how to increase the number of items in the Jump list guide. The recent document shows up at the top of the list.
Method 4 of 4
View recently saved Notepad files
Step 1: Open the Notepad program.
Step 2: Perform right-click on the Notepad icon on the taskbar to open Notepad’s Jump list, which shows up to 10 recently saved/created/modified files using Notepad.
Our how to view recently deleted files in Windows 10 guide might also interest you.
ForceRs says
I wanted a quick way to confirm that my nightly backup to external drive K: was running. I use the freeware application “Everything” to do this. I added a shortcut to my desktop as follows:
“C:\Program Files\Everything\Everything.exe” -filename K:\*.* -sort “Date Modified” -sort-descending
This launches Everything and shows me all files sorted by Date Modified, with the newest ones on top. So a simple double-click in the morning assures me that the backup ran.
Arcus says
You don’t acatually think this is a convenient workaround to the removal of Recently Saved/Opened jumplists,do you? The removal of that simple but very helpful function has ruined my workflow; I’m constantly trying to find or even remember what’s been saved and where, when you’re trying to work fast it’s hard to keep up on every little detail. Having that was a godsend; now it’s gone, replaced with a bunch of little workarounds that don’t amount to the original simple functionality.
Arthur says
Thank you very much for this,
this saved me finally. My problem was, I started a very huge update of an installed programm,
which overfilled my main-partition C: (I could stop the upload in the last minute)
but could not find the files. searching them by date helped me,
but IMPORTANT was I needed to unhide the files in the settings of “folder and searchoptions”.
Have a good time.