Lost word document

[Sen]

Hi, I'm a first time poster, so I hope I'm not stepping on any toes. I'm not too tech savvy, but I'll try to articulate myself as best as I can.

I downloaded a document from my hotmail yesterday, and I copy/pasted it to a new document. I saved it many times, however today I can't find it anywhere. I've looked in "recent places", typed the name into Start's "search", searched it in the computer files, and I can't find anything. I also organized the searches by date, and the last document recorded as saved was a few days ago.

I think I should mention that when I started working on it, my father was in the middle of "backing up" everything onto an external hard drive, which had finished (and I think removed by him) before I had finished typing...so I had continued to save everything afterwards. I've been searching through the backups, but cannot find the file.

Thanks for any help you might give me!