Winrar files missing

[erin-jade]

Hi,
Yesterday I did something stupid.
I thought I had extracted files from WinRAR, but I really just opened them.
I worked on the files and saved them often and closed them.
Today, I went to work on them again and they are nowhere to be found.
I realized what I had done. I looked it up, and tried to find the Temp files.
I have no idea which ones they are.
I searched based on the date modified, but I can't open a single one.
I have tried everything, but I really have no idea what I'm doing.
I would love to recover these files, as I had made many changes, and they are for work.
I feel like they are lost forever, but if anyone has any idea how I can recover these files, it would be amazing!
Thank you so much,
Erin

[Viceman]

Can you check in this folder path whether the files are viewable or not - C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\Recent. If you cant find the file over there then you will end up repeating the work you just did. One last option, if this is a word document, you might be able to launch word, and then go to open or look at the recently accessed documents list and check if that works.

[erin-jade]

Unfortunately, no...they aren't there. It was an excel document and I went to open it from "recent documents" and the list was blank.
I searched everywhere, temp files, backup files, etc. etc.
It's ok though, I calmed down and repeated the work. I'll know better for next time. Thanks for the reply.
Erin