Open Recent in Numbers and Pages still failing in 26.7.1

Question

Open Recent in Numbers and Pages still failing in 26.7.1

In both Numbers, and in Pages, File > Open Recent does nothing other than offer 'Clear menu' when there is nothing there to clear. Files subsequently opened directly in Documents still fail to show as Recent.

Searches here reveal that this bug has been around for quite some time, and is clearly still present in mac os 26.7.1. I've tried restarting as recommended in an earlier closed thread, but unsurprisingly that makes no difference.

Will Apple ever fix this or will we have act stupid and ask Apple 'intelligence' to go and find files that should be listed there?

MacBook Air (M3, 2024)

Posted on Oct 12, 2026 5:36 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Antony Gordon Author

Level 1

26 points

Oct 13, 2026 3:05 AM in response to VikingOSX

Many thanks – problem solved. This was a relatively new Mac on which Numbers and Pages have been little used so far. I was puzzled at having each time to go and find files that had been saved in iCloud.

Somehow I had missed the rather essential System Settings > Menu Bar. There was a default setting there of none, so that has been changed to ten and all is as it should be.

Apple should maybe set a >0 default number there? Surely any user who bothers to select the Recent Documents menu item would be expecting to find one or more files listed there, without having to toddle off to System Settings to enable that.

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Answer 2

VikingOSX

Level 10

131,134 points

Oct 13, 2026 2:41 AM in response to Antony Gordon

In my experience, the Pages or Numbers Open Recent menu will populate on either of a document open, or new document save. I do not use a third-party cloud solution, so cannot test with documents so stored. It does populate when opening a document from iCloud Drive. Also, ensure that you have the following set:

System Settings > Menu Bar : Recent documents, applications, and servers nn ↕︎

Mine is set to 10, and no version of Pages, whether historical or current, has failed to populate that Open Recent menu for me after I have opened and saved Pages, or Numbers documents. I can make this statement in your case with Tahoe 26.7.1, and with Golden Gate v27.0.1, specifically with Pages v14.4, v14.5, and v15.* including v15.4.

There are no fixes for Apple to make based on my experience with these two applications.

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Answer 3

VikingOSX

Level 10

131,134 points

Oct 13, 2026 3:21 AM in response to Antony Gordon

Precisely why this community exists … 😎. Apple can't document every little nuance.

I have noticed with recent operating system releases, whether upgrades, or point updates, that Apple is presuming to set some System Settings to values they choose, not what the user had previously set. Hence, I find myself revisiting System Settings to confirm no unplanned changes have occurred.

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