Office apps startup

[silverback]

When Word or Excel is started, I usually want to update documents/spreadsheets which I have pinned to the Recent files list. To do this, I click on File, then find that Word has selected Info as the initial folder, so I have then to click on Open to see the Recent files list.
Is there a way to make Word choose Open after I've clicked File, please? Even better would be if it displayed the Recent files list on Word startup.

Thanks
Silverback

[JoeP]

If you pin Word and/or Excel to the task bar you can right click on the icon and get a list of recent files to select. That should open the file.

Also, go to File | Options | General | StartUp Options (section). Make sure that "Show the Start screen when this application starts" is selected. You should see recent files in the startup screen.

[stuck]

When Word or Excel is started... ...I click on File, then find that Word has selected Info as the initial folder, so I have then to click on Open to see the Recent files list.

At work I have Office 365, at home I have Office 2016. They both behave the same, which is:
1) If I already have a file open then when I click on 'File' then the default pane that opens is Info.
BUT
2) If I click File when there is no file open or the only file (apparently) open is the default empty / blank file that Word / Excel automatically creates when the application is launched, then the default choice after 'File' is 'Open'.

I don't think you can change this behaviour.

This doesn't bother me because I never use the Recent Files list. I have Explorer open constantly and when I want a file, I use that to browse to it and then double click on it to open it. That way I get what I want very quickly because the files are in a folder structure that makes it easy to find the file I want. The Recent list is by default 50 items long and it's ordered by most recent use, i.e. it is a long unordered list in which it is hard to find the file you want, unless you can make a good guess at how far down the list it will be.

Ken