I accidentally solved this problem when fixing another problem! It now works, at least for me!:) This will undo all of one's settings. These steps are for Windows XP SP3. I closed all LibreOffice windows and exited the QuickStart.
LibreOffice Help Pack (French) is a Shareware software in the category Miscellaneous developed by LibreOffice. It was checked for updates 63 times by the users of our client application UpdateStar during the last month. The Help menu allows you to start and control the LibreOffice Help system. LibreOffice Help. Opens the main page of the LibreOffice Help for the current application. You can scroll through the Help pages and you can search for index terms or any text.
I renamed the LibreOffice directory in the C: Documents and Settings username Application Data directory. I started up LibreOffice (double-clicked on shortcut) and let it recreate the user's LibreOffice directory. I went into Tools - Options. And updated various settings in there (name, country, which dictionaries to use, which Java runtime to use). I selected Text Document and opened an.ott (template) file. It went through its first-time template use, but there were no errors and the new document opened just fine. (Well, yes, I was working on the 'Templates already exists' bug.) Now the Help Pack is displaying the helps like it should!
Also, now opening a template to create a new document works just fine. Also, now the Recent Documents list works just fine. (That means renaming the user's LibreOffice directory fixed all three bugs I had hit in the past 12 hours!) However, the words I added to my dictionary are gone, and the toolbars are now reverted back to the standard ones. Fortunately, I had made very few changes in toolbars and the words are easy to add back as I use them.