Help! I downloaded a word document and it disappeared?

Question

I downloaded a word document from my email and modified it. I saved it several times, but when I closed it, I could not find it among my documents. I think I may have just lost some really important work...

Somebody please tell me there's a way to retrieve it....

Answer 1

Editing a document right out of an email is a dangerous practice.  Often the file that gets opened in Word is a temporary one and disappears totally when Word closes, so Saves to it are useless (Save As's to a different file are OK, but it's often hard to remember to do that.)

It's usually better to save the file out of the email first, then open the saved file and work on it.

All that being said, there's a slim possibility your file still exists in your temp directory:

C:\Documents and settings\your username\Local settings\temp

Don't be fooled by files that look almost like it:  Word also creates some temporary files that are useless to you.

Good luck.

Answer 2

It's out there somewhere.  Do a Search and put in *.doc   This will find all documents with a .doc suffix.  Good luck!

PS, if you open Word and click on File it might already know where it is.  Look for Recent Documents.