I have a corrupted s/sheet. It is crashing Libre Office every time I open any s/sheet

Whenever I try to open any s/sheet, and also when I have just rebooted, I am prompted , in a box headed Libre Office 5.3 document recovery, that document Checkbook.ods is “Not recovered Yet”, and I have the buttons Discard or Start. I do not want to discard my checkbook, so I always press Start. Then it displays Recovery Failed, and the only button available to be pushed is “Finish”. The spreadsheet then comes up intact. But once I close it the same thing happens again, and then I cannot open any ods files at all. I have to open the Task Manager and delete multiple instances of Libre Office and Libre Office Calc. But that is only a temporary fix, since once I try to open a s/sheet again, the whole cycle happens again. So I cannot use Calc at all. This is real mess.

I do not recall the sequence of events that caused this. It was my doing, Something to do with Checkbook.ods being open when I didn’t realize it. I might have deleted a lockfile for it, or it may have been the lockfile for some other file. At some point I renamed checkbook.ods to another name, but when I realized that might be causing a problem, I renamed it back. Sometimes Libre Office leaves lockfiles behind when there is nothing there to close. I don’t understand why and it can be very annoying.

I have read references to a Backup folder where the file might be intact. But version 5.3 does not have it in the location that the articles say it is.

I tried copying each worksheet of checkbook.ods to a new s/sheet. I moved the new s/sheet to a new location on a usb stick. When I try t open the new file, I get the same Recovery prompts that I started the dialogue with. This does not make much sense, but it must still be tied to the original Checkbook.ods.

I have never had to dig under the covers of Libre Office and know nothing about the technical concepts that you are using on this website. So anyone who helps me with this problem will have to walk me through step by step. I am computer savvy but I know absolutely nothing about any terminology that is specific to Libre Office. I appreciate any help offerred - this is a very serious problem.

Side note: if I attempt to open another s/sheet besides Checkbook.ods, let’s call it To Do List.ods, I get the same notice abo0ut checkbook.ods needing recovery, and I have to press the same buttons-Start and Finish. Then when I’ve done that, it opens To Do List.ods, not Checkbook.ods

Additional comment: if I attempt to open another s/sheet besides Checkbook.ods, let’s call it To Do List.ods, I get the same notice abo0ut checkbook.ods needing recovery, and I have to press the same buttons-Start and Finish. Then when I’ve done that, it opens the s/sheet I tried to open, not Checkbook.ods

Have you tried to copy (or move) to another location using file manager? Also backup folder is a user option and can be changed using preferences. Change it to a folder that you can access and you have read-write rights.

Thanks for your response. I don’t know where the backup folder is. It’s location must be different from older versions of Libre Office. Can you point me to it? Re: your first comment- If by File Manager you mean the one that comes with Windows, yes. I’ve copied it to a USB stick. Also tried a Save As to the usb stick. Also copied each worksheet in the s/.sheet to 2 new s/sheets (separated by year) and moved those to the usb stick. None of these worked.- it still tries to recover it.

I fixed this myself. Xonstzatzki’s comment got me thinking. I took the USB stick that I had copied the s/sheet to, and loaded it into another computer I have that has Libre Office installed. It allowed me to open copies of the original s/sheet as well as the 2 new versions I made-without any recovery prompts. Now knowing that I could retain my data, I went back to the PC where it all started and when the Recovery prompt appeared I clicked Discard. I still had my data in several different copies of the s/sheet, and the prompts and problems went away. I have tested and rebooted, and so far everything is working correctly.