How do I find a lost document?

I lost a document. It shows up in the icons of the last 8 docs window but not on a request to open the doc for an e-mail request. Have rebooted computer. I am using Windows 10 and I can open the file from the 8 suggestions window in Libre. The file is a template for a Los Angeles court pleading paper that I downloaded and edited and now I want to share it as an e-mail attachment. When I use g-mail and click on the paperclip to open a file, the resulting list of my documents is missing that document.

Are you using Windows 10? (You didn’t tell us your operating system.) Can you still open the document using LibreOffice?

Your question doesn’t make sense. Please rephrase it, edit the question to do that, don’t add an answer. Th7ngs to include: is the file an email attachment that you opened directly or a file on your computer?

Just guessing, but I wonder if Gmail doesn’t recognize the type of file that you want to attach, so it may be that you need to save the edited document as a different type. What is the extension on the end of the filename of the document? .pdf or .docx or .odt or something? You might need to use your file manager to see the full file name, unless Windows preferences are set to suppress extensions. And is this extension the same as that on the original file?

If you saved the document as a template, it’s probably saved in a templates folder and not in the My Documents folder. The overview with recently opened documents lists those documents regardless of where they were saved. But Gmail will look for the files in a single folder and therefore won’t find it. You can ceck the full path of the document to find its actual location.

I found my document by tracing folders that the computer put the file in. Turns out that it went through >appdata>local>temp. I don’t know why, maybe it was part of the formating embeded in the original template.

You were lucky then. Had you closed Libre, your document would’ve been deleted. Always save attachments when you edit them.