Use of a USB stick with Word is the most frequently-reported cause of loss of documents. Word doesn't play well with these. You can transfer the files to/from such a stick in Windows, but opening them in Word directly from the stick can result in loss. Likewise, saving directly to the stick from Word.


The second most-reported cause of loss of documents is opening directly from an email. Save to the hard drive then open from the hard drive. (This doesn't result in destruction of the documents, just inability to find them before the operating system deletes them.)