Q:

A: Microsoft Word, like many programs, keeps track of your most recently opened documents. That’s often quite handy, as you usually open the same document several times before finishing and moving on.

But when you’re working on something private, how do you keep others from seeing your last-opened documents? The answer comes through a setting hidden deep in Word’s menus.

In Microsoft Word 2007, follow these steps to remove your recently opened document history:

1. Click on the Office button (shown above), and then click Word Options in the bottom of the drop-down menu.
2. Click Advanced.
3. Scroll down the Advanced page until you reach the Display section.
4. Set the value for “Show this number of Recent Documents” to 0 (zero).
5. Click OK button.

The Recent Documents list will be empty.

To add Recent Documents back to your Word list, repeat steps above, but set the number of original documents to 5, 10, or any other number you want.

Or, to keep Word from showing any recently opened documents, just leave that number set to zero.

But you’re not done yet.

Privacy seekers will be horrified to find recently opened documents still appearing in Windows 7′s jump lists – the lists of recently opened documents that appear above a taskbar icon, shown to the left.

To see any program’s jump list, right-click on the program’s icon. When the Jump List appears, click the offending item and choose Remove from this list.

The unwanted item disappears, to be replaced by another recently opened item.

Q: How do I scan a document into Microsoft Word? I’ve scanned the document, and now I need to insert it into a document I’m working on. What do I do?

A: Unfortunately, scanning a document into Microsoft Word isn’t nearly as easy as it sounds.

Scanners work like cameras: They take a photograph of your document.

Microsoft Word, by contrast, works with text — letters and words you can edit.

In order to convert the photograph to text, you need something called Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. OCR software doesn’t come with any version of Windows, but some scanners toss in a copy with their bundled software.

The full-fledged-and-expensive Microsoft Office package, which includes Microsoft Word, also comes with OCR software called “Microsoft Office Document Imaging.”

After you scan your page using your scanner’s Grayscale setting, run the OCR software, which examines the picture, and guesses at what words are printed. Then it saves those words in a text file, which you can open with Word.

Even the best OCR software makes mistakes, unfortunately, due to smudges on the page, closely spaced letters, page creases, and similar discrepancies. Some have trouble recognizing pages that are separated into two columns of text; others are confused by graphics.

So, even when your OCR works, you’ll still need to proofread your text meticulously for errors, especially those dastardly words that slip past the spellcheckers.

The verdict? If you’re importing more than a few pages, OCR software can save you some time. But if you’re only scanning a page or two, it might be quicker to type it in by hand.

A: Adobe created its Portable Document Format (PDF) system to simplify exchanging documents. When viewed with Adobe’s free Reader software, PDF documents look the same on different computers: Their formatting doesn’t change.

But in order to keep PDF files from changing, Adobe locks them down, so you can’t edit them nor translate them easily into other formats. Some Web sites will do the trick for free, though, and these Web sites can both convert PDF files to Microsoft Word files:

PDFtoWord.com

ConvertPDFtoWord.net

These sites and others like them can’t remove passwords from protected PDF files, however.

I’ve never tried either site, but you’ll find similar sites on the Internet. Be sure to use them with PDFs that don’t contain any sensitive information.