How does one delete a document from Microsoft Word?

Question

I received an email with an attachment. I read the attachment. I went to compose a letter and the attachment was a document. I cannot delete it from my 'open a document' and when I try to open a new document the screen has this bold underscore ___ that I cannot delete.

Answer 1

The Open a Document area lists all of your most recently used documents. The same list can be found at the bottom of the File menu. You can't just delete it from the list, since that's something that Word controls internally. Even if you delete the file from your hard drive, the name will still be in the Open a Document list. You can, however, open other Word documents and that list will change, and eventually your unwanted file will go away.

There's an option that controls this list. If you go to Tools - Options, under the General tab, look at the "Recently used file list" option. You can change the number of files that shows up in that list, or you can disable that list completely.

If you really want to get rid of that name in the list, go to Tools - Options, uncheck the box, click on OK, close Word, and restart Word. That will clear out that list so that you don't have anything at all in that list when Word restarts.

Answer 2

Send it to your recycle bin and delete it there. Several ways to send it to the bin, including simply dragging.