Default Folder Word 2007

With Word 2007 - whenever you select 'open' it always starts you off at the
default menu, which is really inconvenient. Previous versions of Word would
start you off in the folder you last activated. How do you overcome this?
Also, I thought 'recent places' would overcome this issue, however this just
shows you the folders and doesn't allow you to access them and comments 'this
file could not be found'?!?

Within the same Word session, the Open dialog box will display the most
recently used folder.

Note that you can "pin" documents to the recently used list (as seen if you
click the Office button) for easy access.