When Microsoft Word crashes usually it opens upon restarting a task pane at the left side offering you to open, examine and save auto recovered documents.

To use this pane with the keyboard –to close it, in case you are not interested in these documents, or just to open one or more auto recovered documents– press F6. This will give focus to the Document Recovery task pane.

Then use the Tab button to activate one after another the saved documents, or just to skip them and reach the button at the bottom that closes the task pane.

Enjoy!