I keep losing files in writer. If I don’t open one for a couple of days it tells me it cannot open the file. If I go into my documents on my pc if cannot find them and tells me the file doesn’t exist. Why are they disappearing? I’ve lost a whole novel I spent the last two weeks redoing the plot line and now it’s gone. I sent an email to the professional support people but thought someone may have an answer here. I really like LIbreOffice but it has given me a lot of headaches when my files get lost and I’m unable to retrieve them. I have done all I can on my end without killing my laptop because I’m not all that savvy with the computer jargon.
It looks like you are saving files into your email app. The email app might delete temporary files (your edited files) from time to time when it cleans or compacts.
There is one place that Microsoft sets up for documents; it is call Documents and is at C:\Users\Connie\Documents. You should save email attachments that you want to edit or store in that place, preferably in suitable sub-folders, and edit them from there.
This page might be helpful, File management - The Document Foundation Wiki
BTW always save in .odt format, you will lose functionality especially with rtf. If you need to share with someone else who cannot afford LibreOffice then you can Save a Copy in another format for them; don’t continue editing the foreign format copy
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If you can’t afford LibreOffice, you are poor indeed.
tdf#117578
Note that allowing editor programs (like LibreOffice) to save the temporary files back would also be a bug in the respective mailer program. Any sensible mailers and/or browsers (take Thunderbird as an example) set read-only attribute to their temporarily created attachment files. This disallows applications opening these attachments to save their edits back, requiring a “Save As”, and thus, requiring to consider the saving location. When Thunderbird for some reason failed to set such a read-only attribute, they treated that accordingly, and fixed.
If Microsoft can’t afford fixing their mailer program, users are suggested to seek for saner alternatives 
However, the read-only flag is set by the app based on my testing; I filed tdf#155025.
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Windows can clean temporary files by themself, and here it seems anything “unused” (there is internal bookkeeping on file access) is removed. This is a good feature for cached-data from web-browsers, but therefore the data you create/need has to be saved to a persistent place: Your Documents-folder. Nothing in this folder will be deleted by automated cleaning (unless you create an own job for this).
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One hint: Use SaveAs to check “where” you are. If you can not understand the path, save a copy in your own Documents folder. (I assume you will not “understand” that AppData path you’ve shown)
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