Any open office file (all dot odt format)that I attempt to open opens in the document recovery mode;click recover goes to successfully recovered,click finish & the file closes. Attempt to re-open and this circularity begins. Open other dot odt files and ea joins the list of documents to recover and the list just adds each successive file to be recovered in other words all open office files are in a circular path. How has this happened and how to remedy it?

Not sure I can help, but my Ubuntu system also goes into the recovery mode but does it successfully. Not sure why your system would circulate as you said.

My Ubuntu laptop does the successful recover thing from time to time. You might consider backing up your files and re-installing OOo from the package manager. I don't have a surgical answer.

Assuming you are using OpenOffice 3.x ...

Here's one possibility. Safer to rename the directory that remove it, though.

Alternatively you could simply move ~/.openoffice aside by renaming it. If that fixes the problem it would show that the problem is caused by something within ~/.openoffice.

Moving ~/.openoffice aside would loose all your personal customisation; if re-creating it would be a lot of work, you could browse ~/.openoffice trying to find the files (incl. ownerships and permissions) that are causing the problem. EDIT: maybe ~/.openoffice.org/3/user/registry/data/org/openoffice/Office/Recovery.xcu