jpreeder said

I received a Word document as an e-mail attachment. I clicked the button to download the file and chose the "Open" option, which brought up a dialog box asking, "What should Firefox do with this file?" I selected the "Open with Microsoft Word (default)" option. The document was opened in a protected view of Microsoft Word, with a "Protected View" task bar across the top of the window. By clicking the "Enable Editing" button in the task bar, I had the document fully open in Word. I proceeded to edit the document extensively, using Ctrl+S to save it intermittently. When I had completed editing, I saved it once more and closed. Later, I could not find the document anywhere. Where was it saved?

This file will be saved as a temp file. To get the file back follow these on Windows machine:

• Search for a program named run or You can press windows key + r to open run dialogue box.
• On the dialogue box type %temp%
• Then click ok. It will open a folder in windows explorer. Search for your desired file, hope you'll get it here.

Searching the temp folder did not work. Thanks for trying.

You should always use "Save as" and save the file under a different name and in a different folder to avoid dataloss and never under the same name in the temp folder.

You can check in Word if there were temporary copies of the file saved.