How to Create a Shortcut to Quickly Access the Last Document Opened in Word 2013

If you’re working on a long document in Word, you’ll probably be opening it often until it’s completed. Rather than opening Word to the general start screen, and then opening the file, you can automatically open the last document you were working on.

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To do this, we will create a separate shortcut with a special switch that will open the last document that was open in Word. If you already have a shortcut on your desktop for Word, create a copy of that shortcut.
If you don’t have a shortcut on the desktop, navigate to the following directory if you’re using Word 2013 in Windows 8.

“C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office15\WINWORD.EXE”

NOTE: Use “Program Files (x86)” in the path if you’re using a 32-bit version of Word on a 64-bit operating system. Otherwise, use “Program Files”.
Right-click on the WINWORD.EXE file and select Send to | Desktop (create shortcut).

Right-click on the new shortcut and select Properties.

In the Target edit box, put the cursor after the path currently there (preserving the quotes), and enter the following:

/mfile1

Click OK to save the change.

Change the title of the shortcut to indicate it will open the last opened document.

If you want to setup a shortcut to open other documents in the MRU (Most Recently Used) list, use a different number after “/mfile” in the Target edit box. For example, to open the next-to-last file you used, add “/mfile2” to the end of the command in the Target edit box.