Recent Documents Web Part Explanation

Question

I am currently trying to implement a Recent Documents Web part in SharePoint Online using the Modern Experience, however, I don't yet understand how it works. The main documents i want to show up are PDFs located in a document library that the user recently viewed.

Right now, on a site where I've only accessed PDFs, the web part doesn't pull anything. On another site where i accessed PDFs frequently, it only pulled word documents that i have edited.

How exactly does this web part work? Does it only pull documents I've edited? Does it not pull PDFs at all?

Any explanation as to what might be happening is appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

The Recent Documents Web Part displays the most recent documents accessed by the current user of the page.

Per my test in my SharePoint online environment, the Recent Documents Web Part will display the PDF files.

You could increase the number of “Maximum number of documents to show” in the Recent Documents Web Part.

For more detailed information, refer to the articles below.

5 ways to display recently modified documents on a SharePoint site.

Use the Recent documents web part.