Open recent files command on Quick access toolbar in office 2013

On the More Commands dialog, there is an Import/Export button at the bottom right.  Export your current settings, it will create a Excel/Access/Word/appname Customizations.exportedUI file, defaulting to your My Documents folder.

You can open this exportedUI file with Notepad, it has a list of the current customizations in xml format.  There are a series of nodes available, each beginning with a "<mso:" and ending with "/>".  The sections labeled as "control" have named idQ and visible parameters.  Find one with a named idQ parameter that you would like your Recent Files to be located after, place your cursor after the closing "/>" and paste in:

<mso:control idQ="mso:FileOpenRecentFile" visible="true" insertBeforeQ="mso:FileNewDefault"/>

Save the file, and re-import it into your application.  There may be some more tricks to this, but it seemed to work for my Access application.

Here's a way to get the same functionality.

In the Visual Basic Editor

1. Insert a UserForm in the Normal template
2. Name the form in the Properties window frmRecentFiles
3. Change the Caption of the form to "Recent Files - Double click on a file to open it"
4. Insert a Listbox into the form that is wide enough to display the path and filename of the recent files
5. Right click on the UserForm and select View Code
6. Copy and paste the following code into Code window
   
   

   Private Sub lstRecentFiles_DblClick(ByVal Cancel As MSForms.ReturnBoolean)
   On Error Resume Next
   Documents.Open lstRecentFiles.List(lstRecentFiles.ListIndex)
   Me.hide
   End Sub

   Private Sub UserForm_Initialize()
   Dim objAllRecentFiles As Object
   Dim WSHShell, RegKey, rFile
   Set WSHShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
   Set objAllRecentFiles = Application.RecentFiles
   RegKey = "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Word\File MRU\"
   For Each rFile In objAllRecentFiles
       Me.lstRecentFiles.AddItem Mid(WSHShell.RegRead(RegKey & "Item " & rFile.Index), InStr(WSHShell.RegRead(RegKey & "Item " & rFile.Index), "*") + 1)
   Next rFile
   End Sub
   
   

7. Insert a module into the Normal template and in that module, create a macro that contains the following code:
   
   Dim myform As frmRecentFiles
   Set myform = New frmRecentFiles
   myform.Show
   Set myform = Nothing

Add a button to the Quick Access Toolbar to run that Macro.

When you run that macro, a form like the following should appear

and Double clicking on a file will open it.