wondering what is happening with the Recent Documents function. This is essential to my use of LibreOffice.
See if this fixes it for you
http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/en/project/HistoryMaster
Please report back 
Installed with no errors. checked the new menu items “Recent documents of the same type.” nothing there by default. Set Picklist to Texts as against default of All, still nothing.
As you open new files they should be added there. Your entries previous to installing HistoryMaster will not be recovered.
Nothing is being added to HistoryMaster. I have opened files and closed Writer, then reopened it. Nothing is listed.
History Master does not fix the problem. I am on Windows XP pro, in case that matters.
Then exit LO, go to %AppData%\LibreOffice\3\user and rename registrymodifications.xcu to .old and restart LO
I had exactly the same problem both after installing 3.5 and 3.5.1 on a Windows 7 computer: There are never any “recent documents” no matter how many you have opened. It is very frustrating.
This is one of the reasons I went back to LibreOffice 3.4.5 (the other being crashes).
However, I did notice something interesting (and even more frustrating!) that may provide a clue about the problem: When switching back to 3.4.5 it lost “recent documents” as well!!
I think this answer in the ML can help.
http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/SOLVED-lack-of-recent-documents-tc3836391.html
Maybe helpful:
(1) “One general problem with migration…”
(2) Bug 46074 - FILEOPEN: No Recent Documents…
Comment #32:
“To clarify:…”