What to Do If You Lost Your File in Windows

I had a very important report to do and I worked most of the day on it. When I was done I saved it, so I could check it the next day before I submitted it to my boss. But the next day it wasn't where I expected to find it and it wasn't anywhere that I could reasonably imagine it to be. Sound familiar? Here are some things you can do that might help. I have to warn you though, sometimes things are lost and only a very experienced computer whiz can retrieve any part of them.

The simple things first. Do not empty your Recycle Bin until you are quite certain that your file is not there. Open it and then open everything you see there. Don't pay attention to the names of the files; open them and look at what you have thrown away. It's probably not here, but it's possible.

Next, open the program you used to create it and click on the Open File icon. You'll see a list of documents or other file types associated with the program. Chances are that your missing file will be here, but maybe under a different name; it might be listed as Doc 1, or it might have defaulted to the first line you typed in. Again, open everything you see. If there are too many for this to be practical, at least look at every name and open anything that even remotely sounds like it could be your file.

Look at your Start Menu; the list that pops up when you click on the Start button in the lower left corner (for most people). Some computers are set up to show a list of recent documents and your file may be here. They may even be listed as "My Recent Documents". If you don't have that option then click on "Search" or "Find Files and Folders". Type in the name you most likely gave to your file, then try a few names that might or might not have come to mind when you saved the file. If that doesn't do it, try to remember something specific that you put in the file; a few words in a row will do. Have it search for the phrase that you remember. If nothing comes to mind, or if your search is fruitless and you have the option, try searching by date. You know when you worked on it last. For each search you should get a list of possibilities that you can look over.

None of the above helped me find my file, but I did find it and here's what I did. I started a new document and keyed in a few characters. Then I tried to save it, using "Save as", so I could see where it was going, and I saw that it was being saved to a folder called something like OKLSE, or some such. I wrote down what I saw and searched again for that folder, but nothing came up. Then I remembered that there are Hidden Files on a computer. Most often they're hidden because you can destroy your programs if you accidentally delete them. They don't show up anywhere you look on your computer under normal circumstances. if you've come this far and you still haven't found your file then go to your Control Panel. You may have an icon for this on your desktop. If not, then click on Start and you should see it. In the Control Panel look for Folder Options and double-click on it. You are looking for something that will allow you to change your preferences for Hidden Files and Folders. You may have to look around a bit, but on my computer I found it behind a tab called View. By default, this is set at "Do not show hidden files and folders" and you, of course, want to change that to "Show hidden files and folders". Once you have made this change you should be able to search again and find your file.

In my case, the OKLSE turned out to be a temporary Internet file folder and would have been automatically deleted under certain circumstances. It was down about six layers and I might never have found the thing by a folder-by-folder search, even if it hadn't been a hidden file. I guess the lesson to be learned here is, whenever you are working on something important, always use "Save as" rather than "Save", because then you can see what folder it's going into. Sure, if you've already saved it before it will ask you if you want to replace the existing file, but that's a small price to pay when your talking about a day's work. Oh, one more thing. After you're done, whether you find your file or not, be sure to go back and hide those files and folders again; you don't want to delete something by mistake and kill your word processor program.