Each time I start Writer it insists on starting recovery. There’s no option to give up trying to recover a particular file. You can skip attempting it at any given start, but the only way it’ll stop asking is if it eventually succeeds. If the original file no longer exists, or is no longer accessible, then it’ll never stop asking; if you do attempt recovery it’ll mark it “Failed”, but then ask again next time Writer starts. To fix this: Delete
~/.openoffice.org/3/user/registry/data/org/openoffice/Office/Recovery.xcu
(thanks)