Click the Windows circle in the left hand corner and type in the name of the document to search for it. If you didn't name it type *.doc and all the documents on the computer will show up.

 

A few options:

Check your recently opened documents list
Search for all documents created or modified in the last day or so
Just do a search on all documents with the wildcard *.doc (or: *.docx for Word 2007 documents)
Open Word back up and check history of recently opened documents
Lastly go back to Hotmail, and check it's not saved there

That's a few options

 

I don't know if I've explained myself very well, I just opened the document on hotmail, didn't save it anywhere as I opened it, did some work, then just pressed save, will it have gone to some temp folder??

It's not on my recent items list on word either I've tried searching but nothing is coming up.

 

I'd say it's at Hotmail in your email

 

How do I check this? I've tried reopening the document but it's not showing the new work I did before pressing save.

 

ok last place, that should have come up with a search is

Start > Run > %temp%

Or in Vista language

Orb > Search > %temp%

You know you are making me think about trying this as an example to see what happens, I've never tried it before ! I would have thought that Word would have prompted you to give it a name or location. Unless... unless it wasn't saved at all

 

Looks like I'm going to have to do it again, looked everywhere.

I normally always make sure I press save as rather than just save, but I was in a rush. Aaargh!

 

You could check your temporary internet files, it may be in there.

Were you doing this with IE? I know IE used to (IE 6) open up Word files inside the browser itself in sort of a psudo Word environment, I am not sure if IE7 or 8 still does that. It seemed to be fully functional Word just missing some of the buttons. Anyway, if that is what happened in your case I'd take a look in your temp internet files for anything that looks like a Word document.

 

sounds right to me too.

Opening an attachment to email will deposit the file into %temp% or internet temp and
then launch the application associated with the extension (ie *.doc in this case -> Word we assume).
Whether it's your email client or a web-base gmail/hotmail system, the application and the data are on YOUR PC.

Get into the habit when editing attachments, IMMEDIATELY perform a SAVE AS ..
to relocate the file into one of your known directories

I would use search on \Documents and Settings\yourloginid\ and look for
.doc files (notice we're searching for ALL files ending in .doc)
I will take a bit, but the list will have it if it's still present. Use View->List and then click on the name column heading to sort by name --
you should be able to scroll and find the file name