Saved OneDrive Excel files sporadically not appearing in Excel Recents

This is a known issue that recommends refreshing the Recent Documents setting, clearing the Office cache, or ensuring active folders are kept offline for reliable recognition.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-sg/answers/questions/5580661/office-365-files-saved-in-onedrive-do-not-appear-i

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-nz/answers/questions/5879211/recent-files-not-showing-up-in-word-excel-due-to-o

Clear the Office Document Cache

The Office Document Cache stores temporary data for files opened from OneDrive, SharePoint, or other cloud locations. Corruption here can prevent new entries from being added to Recents.

To clear the cache:

    Close all Office applications.

    Press Win + R, type %localappdata%\Microsoft\Office\16.0\OfficeFileCache, and press Enter.

    (If you're using an older Office version, replace 16.0 with 15.0.)

    Delete all files and folders inside the OfficeFileCache folder.

    Restart your computer (important – the cache rebuilds on next Office launch).

    Open Excel, open a OneDrive file, save it, close Excel, then reopen to see if it appears in Recents.

Sporadic missing recents for OneDrive files are usually caused by cache corruption or sync glitches. The most effective fixes are clearing the Office Document Cache and resetting the Excel MRU registry key. If those don’t help, check OneDrive sync settings and repair Office. Because the problem is intermittent, it may take a combination of these steps to fully resolve.