[Solved] Stuck in Document Recovery

[JeffR]

First off, the specs: Open Office 2.2, Freespire 2.0.3 Linux, running on HP Pavillion zv5000 with 500 MB ram, plenty of disc space.

When opening a document OO crashed and tried to recover the document. The Recovery window shows Untitled in the document frame and 'not yet recovered' in the Status frame. The instructions indicate to press 'Start Recovery', but there is no such button or link and the Recovery window won't close.

Rebooted the system, but the Recovery window opens when trying to open the Writer or any other module (tried a complete shutdown as well and then tried to open a spreadsheet).

If someone could tell me how to get around this, it would be greatly appreciated. We're stuck and can't open any of the OO modules.

Thanks.

[Hagar Delest]

To stop the recovery process, you can delete the file Documents and settings/<user>/Application data/Openoffice.org2/user/registry/data/org/openoffice/Office/Recovery.xcu.

Beware, it resets the settings for Autosave in the Tools>Options>Load/Save>General dialog.

Thanks to add '[Solved]' in your first post title (edit button) if your issue has been fixed.

[JeffR]

Thanks a million!

The path was different on Linux, but I found the file and deleted it. Everything is working fine now.

Path for linux users:

file:///home/<your user name>/.openoffice.org2/user/registry/data/org/openoffice/Office/Recovery.xcu

You will have to show hidden files and directories to see the .openoffice.org2 directory.

[RussMcNeil]

I have the same problem and all of my Openoffice apps are responding with the unclosable untitled1 not recovered yet document window. I have basically lost huge functionality with Writer and have had to download AbiWord to continue working. There is no document named recovery.xcu anywhere on the system so I am really at a loss. I removed and reinstalled all the openoffice apps but still no luck.

[Phil]

RussMcNeil, have you tried to Reset user's application profile?

[talewins]

It's happened again several times. It takes hours to find the right file because there is no .xcu anywhere. Since it makes the computer virtually useless as well I will have to quit using Open Office and stop advising my clients to use it. What a shame.

[foxcole]

It's happened again several times. It takes hours to find the right file because there is no .xcu anywhere. Since it makes the computer virtually useless as well I will have to quit using Open Office and stop advising my clients to use it. What a shame.

Did you follow the suggestions?

Also, I see you're a Vista user. What a headache Vista is!!! Causes all kinds of problems.

It's possible you're not seeing any .xcu files because OOo might have been installed for all users, but you're searching from your user account. Vista by default prevents users, even those with admin rights, from doing many types of things. It could be actively hiding this file type from you. Do you have UAC turned on? If so, disable it and see if that improves your results. For more details, search the Internet for "Vista UAC problems".

I see no reason for you to advise your clients to stop using it. Many, many, many people are using it with no problems. I'm using it on two different operating systems with no problems, one of which is Vista, with no problems. I'm afraid you will be doing your users a disservice. Let's concentrate on fixing your problem.

[talewins]

Yes, Vista is a problem and I believe it is a deliberate problem because it disabled thousands (if not millions) of ebooks right when Microsoft was leaping into the ebook arena. But I've been running Vista for quite some time and never had a problem with previous versions of Open Office before.
As for advising my clients coming to http://www.talewins.com/software/ I am telling them in the ads leading them there that the software is simple enough that even I (a dumb Indian) can use it.
In previous editions document recovery was a simple matter, click "no" and go on. This new edition has no visible place to click. Nor is there a way to raise the screen to see if there is a button hidden below the fold. The electricity goes off on this mountain at least 2 or 3 times a week. Since I am working in Open Office 18 hours a day I am bound to get hit almost every time it goes off. Wrestling with this problem over and over again is not a good solution and is definitely not a problem I want my clients involved in as they know less than the little that I do. Is there someplace to set options so that it doesn't try to recover documents automatically, like there was in previous editions?
For those with a more intermittent crisis, the problem is resolved by;

If your operating system is VISTA then if Open Office ever does get closed down without warning, power failure, whatever, when it is started again Open Office will try to recover the document it was working on. You might be unable to close the recovery window.
If so, go to your START button, go to SEARCH and BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING ELSE, click the option in the lower left hand corner -- see yellow spot on image below INCLUDE NON-INDEXED, HIDDEN, AND SYSTEM FILES. Unless you click this option you will have to look through hundreds and hundreds of files and probably still won't find this file.
Now, look in the right hand top corner for another yellow spot. You will type in the words "Recovery.xcu" Directly under that you will see options Picture Music Other. It may speed things up if you click OTHER. Now start your Search.
This should bring up only the one file. Delete this file, then shut your computer down and start it up again. Open Office should work as good as new until the next event.

or http://www.talewins.com/images/ads/openofficefix.jpg if I fail to insert the picture above ... http://www.talewins.com/images/ads/openofficefix.jpg
And I apologize to all involved for not being able to use a computer with any degree of familiarity.

[Phil]

I cannot see any change in behavior between version 2.3.1 and 2.4.1 - however I am on an Win XP system.

I have just simulated a crash on my system with the 2.4.1 version (killing the soffice.bin process with the task manager).
Indeed after restarting OpenOffice, the recovery dialog comes up:

Then I hit "Cancel" and "No" in the conformation dialog:

Dialog-2.png (8.93 KiB) Viewed 44100 times

OpenOffice then opens normally, and also the recovery does not show up at the next start.

Can anyone confirm this behavior also for Vista?

Regards, phil

[RussMcNeil]

RussMcNeil, have you tried to Reset user's application profile?

That worked!! I used the command "mv ~/.openoffice.org2 ~/.openoffice.org2.backup" and am now able to open files in writer and all other office apps. That was very helpful. Thanks so much phil.

RussMcNeil

[chronk]

The path for Vista by default would be:

C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\OpenOffice.org2\user\registry\data\org\openoffice\Office

(username) is the user name that you are currently logged into Vista as.

You can go to the folder, and delete the file, instead of "Searching" for it.

If someone else set up the computer for you and you are unsure of your username, click on the Windows "Start"
(round circle with Windows Flag - at bottom left of your screen - by default),
and at the top it will have your username, just above the word "Documents".

Maybe this will help someone.

You could make a shortcut to the "Office folder, and put it on your "Desktop", or in your "Documents" folder.
If you do not know how to create the shortcut to your "Office" Folder above, or how to get to that location:

Click on: Start (round Windows Flag) and on the right hand side, click on "Computer", then click on "C: Partition 1"
(may be listed differently, but most Factory built Vista installs have C: partition1 and D: Recovery - or similar)
Click on: Users
Click on: Your name, or whatever the name of your user account is.
Click on: the next item in the path listed above, until you get to "Office".
Right Click on the "Office" folder, left click on "Send to", then choose "(Desktop - Create Shortcut)" from the drop down list.

Good Luck!

Chronk

[Phil]

Thanks, Chronk, for this follow-up on Vista!

Regards, phil

[waynemwright]

Thanks, On the newby forum I had asked about Document Recovery, being apparently frozen, not having buttons at the bottom, and always appearing when OO was opened and got no answer, but after reading through the posts here and seeing the screen shots of what the Document Recovery window ought to look like, I was finally able to figure out how to access the buttons and abort the recovery process.

I just hope I can remember when it happens again.

When a future version of OO is being programmed, I for one would prefer, when OO is opened after an abrupt shutdown, to have a small pop-up that asks "Do you want to recover documents from your last session?" rather than the large Document Recovery screen opening automatically. Another alternative would be to make the Document Recovery window smaller but with the buttons showing rather than being off screen. Let any excess area of the screen slide under the buttons so that the buttons always showed.

if some experienced hand knows how to get this suggestion to the powers that be, Thanks.

[mparmley]

I cannot find the file in Windows 7. Can anyone tell me the path in Windows 7?

[mparmley]

Sorry, document search eventually found it in C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\OpenOffice.org\3\user\registry\data\org\openoffice\Office

[balinsky]

For MacOS, the Recovery file is in:
/Users/<yourusername>/Library/Application Support/OpenOffice.org/3/user/registry/data/org/openoffice/Office

Delete Recovery.xcu, and OpenOffice starts fine. This problem had plagued me for months, before I searched for this thread and solved it.

[mparmley]

I also had to remove the file Recovery.dat from the same directory before it would let me open a blank calc.

[mparmley]

Unfortunately, I was only able to get out of the document recovery loop for one document. Even after deleting the Recovery files, it would go right back to the recovery screen, making the whole program unuseable. So I have uninstalled open office even though it has been one of my favorite programs. I have installed, instead Office Pro 2003.

[jimmiller5417]

With all due respect to the helpful hints, the unsolved problem of document recovery needs a major overhaul by OO. OO documents which fail to close and even some which are closed and deleted, continue to appear in the OO Recovery window.

At the very least, OO ought to add a check box in the Document Recovery windows which allows the user to deselect Recovery. I always backup my OO fines to an external drive, so I don't really need the recovery function. In addition, I create the files in the .doc format since many other programs can open .doc or .xls files but none can open .odt and the other OO files.

I am running Windows 7 on an HP Presario and, despite the advice, cannot find the "Recovery.xcu file using search. Yes, I have enabled that all hidden files be shown. I deleted "office" as per instructions by following the path (which has changed some), then loaded OO 3.3.0 and got the Document Recovery window, again and again.

This defect in OO is overwhelming to those of us who use OO for hours a day. It is untenable. I'm sorry to have to leave OO. There are still plenty of files in .odt which I need to open and am still interested in using OO, but cannot with the failure of OO staff to fix the Document Recovery problem of which they have had more than adequate notice for several years.
Jim Miller
6-23-11

E-mail removed, nobody will reply by mail and it will avoid spam bots to register your address (Hagar, Moderator).

[exegete77]

Jim, I appreciate your dilemma. But on this forum, we are all volunteers to help, not the programmers who can change anything in OO. You would need to add your voice to the bug fixes.

[floris v]

Strangely, the path \registry\data\org\openoffice\Office is missing in my user profile, for all instances that I have on my computer, except OOo4kids.

[Hagar Delest]

Indeed. I had not reset my profile for a long time and hadn't noticed that!
It seems to be in the file that is directly in the \user folder.
There is a part about recovery:
<item oor:path="/org.openoffice.Office.Recovery/RecoveryList">
...
</item>

I guess you've to delete the part related to the file that can't be recovered.

[jdpipe]

FWIW on Linux with OOo 3.2, this is done by deleting as follows (in a terminal window):

rm ~/.openoffice.org/3/user/registry/data/org/openoffice/Office/Recovery.xcu

[JamesJo]

Surprisingly, but rm ~/.openoffice.org/3/user/registry/data/org/openoffice/Office/Recovery.xcu passes well.

[Shawn]

What a pain this was but when I upgraded to open office 3.3, I made me quite the program. Then I constantly got this recovery window that can't be closed. I tried everything suggested on the forum and still to no avail. Then I went in finder and search for library, then application support, open office.org, then the folder 3, then I took the user folder and deleted it in the trash. Once that was done, I sent to the finder and went to applications and then pulled the open office logo down to the trash. Then I re-installed open office and since the user data was no longer there, it didn't see that I had forced it to close and everything worked perfectly.

[SidF]

I am helping a friend with a W7 PC. He is elderly and has only just started using a computer to write lengthy documents using word processing software. To avoid paying for MS Office and perhaps having file incompatibility problems, I recommended he used Open Office. I have no idea how he managed to get into the Document recovery loop that didn't work but he did. I suspect he might have shut the machine down with OO and a document still open or he might have closed the lid of his laptop to hibernate it. However he did get into the document recovery loop that doesn't work and I had to uninstall OO and reinstall it. This didn't work at first but did in the end. Then he got stuck in the Document Recovery loop again so I uninstalled OO and installed LO. This worked for a while but he is now having the same problem. There is no way this user is going to be able to search for the xcu file that is recommended for deletion. This problem makes both OO and LO unusable in my opinion and I will not be recommending the applications again until the problem is fixed. I have told my friend to get a copy of MS Office.
Are the people who develop OO or LO actually working on a fix for this?

[Hagar Delest]

Since 3.3, the recovery.xcu file has disappeared. You've to delete the registrymodifications.xcu file in the root folder of the profile (/user), see [Tutorial] The OOo user profile.

[SidF]

Today I got my hands on the computer with the Recovery problem and found it to be the problem where the Recovery dialog box is much bigger than the screen and will not slide up above the top of the screen so the buttons to start recovery are not visible. Rather than play around with the font settings for the display, I decided to try to use the keyboard shortcuts to guess what was on the dialog buttons. Alt+s and Alt+n seemed to work, I'm guessing these would be start and next.

I could not find any recovery.xcu files on Windows 7 but then the Documents and Settings file structure has changed so much from XP that I wasn't able to find a path like the ones described above.

For the time being, my friends problem seems to be solved. I would like to understand why Libre Office documents seem to get damaged so often that they need to be recovered.

[Hagar Delest]

I could not find any recovery.xcu files on Windows 7

Please read my post above...

[Gooshlem]

For MacOS, the Recovery file is in:
/Users/<yourusername>/Library/Application Support/OpenOffice.org/3/user/registry/data/org/openoffice/Office

Delete Recovery.xcu, and OpenOffice starts fine. This problem had plagued me for months, before I searched for this thread and solved it.

I am hopeless with computer language. All my OO files need to be recovered. When I click on recover, OO freezes up and i need to force quit. I am trying to figure out how to do what you suggest, but can't even find /Users/<my name>/Library/Application Support/Open Office.org/3/user/registry/data/org/openoffice/Office
how do i go about this? Where do i start?
Also if the recovery is aborted, does that mean all the documents i have saved in OO are now gone for good?
Thanks
Gooshlem