As part of an Office 2010 deployment I needed to remove the Recent Documents option from Word.  It’s possible to do this using the Office 2010 Group Policy settings.

Download and extract the Office 2010 Administrative Template files http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=18968

Download and extract the Office 2010 Help Files: Office Fluent User Interface Control Identifiers http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=6627

Open the Group Policy Object you wish to use to manage Office 2010.  Expand User Configuration, Policies and right-click on Administrative Templates.  Choose Add/Remove Templates…

Select the Office 2010 adm files and click Close

Go to the location to which you extracted the Office 2010 Help Files: Office Fluent User Interface Control Identifiers.  Open the Excel spreadsheet for the appropriate application.

Search the spreadsheet for the control you wish to disable.  I wanted to remove access to Recent documents, so noted control IDs 21439 and 19950.

Expand User Configuration, Policies, Microsoft Word 2010, Disable Items in User Interface, Custom and open Disable commands

In Disable commands choose enable, click Show and enter the control IDs you wish to disable.  Separate multiple values with a comma. Click OK and close the Group Policy editor.

 

Recent document is now disabled