As the title reads. I was told I didn't have permission to open my essay for a final in my class at uni that is due tomorrow, it deleted itself, the backup copy, and the autorecovery file. In between crying and screaming, I found an empty, 6KB folder entitled RRfinalessay, which was the name of the document. Been trying to see if there is a way that my doc turned into that folder but no file extension allows it to be opened.

I went through data recovery, got back like 50,000 documents but not one was what I needed.

This is the second time this has happened. I don't want my document back anymore, I want a friggin explanation for this bs.

Was the file on a USB drive? If so, the most likely explanation is that the drive was removed without going through the 'safe removal/eject' process. That regularly accounts for lost & corrupted Word files, though I don't know why it would affect backup copies - unless a fresh backup had been made and not closed when the drive was removed. Time to restore your file from your last known good backup or an email copy.

Other than that, your Mac might have an OS error and/or a faulty Office installation. Are both fully-updated? A reinstall of Office would be required to fix it if it's faulty.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

No it wasn't on a USB, though when I compress the folder and change the extension to doc, docx, txt, it usually says it is corrupted. No restore files available, no remnants of the document at all besides this folder.

Simply changing an extension to anything other than what Word gives it is of itself liable to cause problems with Word - and any other application, for that matter.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]