Can documents simply disappear?

Since this has already happened more often with our big daughter, I'm slowly beginning to doubt my mind…

Since home schooling is taking place at the moment, our large team has to work a lot on the laptop. Since she is 18 I'm of course not sitting next to her and looking at her fingers. However, she keeps coming to me and says her files are gone. It would save the Word document and also save it as a PDF. However, neither document can be found in the slightest.

Now the question arises, does it really save it, or can it really be that such files are suddenly untraceable. Neither in the trash, nor anywhere else.

However, the last known path is always in a temp state folder on drive c

With temp state it may well be that the data is gone after a restart.

You have to change the storage path.

It can happen quickly.

Even in college.

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Try to save the documents in another path or make a copy in onedrive or google drive

The problem is, there was no restart. And when I look at the laptop, it almost looks like the document never existed. It only appears in the history of Libre Office. There's no trace of it anywhere else. And it can't be restored from the course of Libre, since it no longer exists

Use one drive and synchronize is activated, but nothing can be found there either

Storage path is actually c: documents. At least that was the case, but I don't know if she changed anything

I would have a look there

Ok, then try to save your documents on the desktop and then upload them to google drive

She just rewrites her work and then comes to me. I also said that it shouldn't save anything, first want to see what it made and see that it is immediately saved in the cloud. Everything is just so suspicious, because such problems are always only with her 🙈. Others in the house don't have that either, and that hasn't happened to me in 16 years.

Save the doc on a USB stick

It can happen. The entire document folder has disappeared from my office without warning. From one second to the next it was gone. By chance, our system admin was standing next to me, otherwise I would have run into problems.
He was able to reconstruct the files (free recovery tools are available, they are quite usable), but it was work. This and the search program should make it possible to find the data again.
If not already done: If the PC is used by several users, you should give each one their own profile and make sure that (at least with Word) the automatic saving is activated.

OK, the problem was actually the storage path. It somehow managed to save the temp state folder location. If you have set it up correctly again and indicated that you have to pay attention to it, then hopefully nothing will disappear mehr.

As security we will do additional, you also advised to get an external hard drive.