Word deletes corrupt documents

[wardw]

I copyedit science journal articles using Word 2007 on a PC. Twice in the last month, halfway through editing, Word complains that it has a problem with the document and I have to use the Task Manager to close Word. When I reopened Word, the documents listed in the File Recovery panel are very old. When I open the folder where I had been saving the work in progress (many times), the document is not there. When I do a search of my hard drive for it, I find a 1 KB file whose name is preceded by `$. When I try to open it in Word, I'm told the file "cannot be opened because there are problems with its contents."

So I've lost 2 days' worth of editing. I have to start again from the original document. I've tried two file recovery programs, but all I can point them to to recover is the 1 KB file; I suspect it's just a pointer or something, so they can't "recover" it.

I've been given lots of corrupt files (Chinese science papers have lots of formulae and graphics, and hundreds of corrections are needed), but I can usually fix them. Not so, when they disappear entirely.

Before Word has its "problem" with a document, I've already saved it many times as I work. But in the 2 cases I've described, there's no indication that the file was not "really" being saved, and it disappears. How can I either recover these papers or ensure the saved versions don't get deleted?