Insertion of symbolic link

For LibreOffice Writer .odt file in Linux Mint “Rebecca” 64 bit.

I had a large document called “Personal Assessment.odt” with an icon access on my desktop (about 400K+ bytes, 75000+ words. 220+ printed pages) that I’ve worked on for several years. I tried to copy the icon to my documents folder and wound up with a symbolic link in both places, both of which say “no such file exists.” A search with “Catfish File Search” gives the same result. I don’t remember precisely what I did to copy the file but presume I used the “copy/paste” functions.
Either:

  1. I did the wrong thing (user error)
  2. There is a bug in LibreOffice
  3. This is a serious unintended malfunction…can’t imagine the purpose
    Please let me know a way to retrieve the file if such exists. I have no usable backup.

Thanks, Randy Butterfield