"Sorry we couldn't find your file. Was it moved renamed or deleted?"

[RubyMay]

I am receiving this message when trying to open a Word document. It is not synced to OneDrive and the file is not on OneDrive at all, just a local file. 

I have read all previous discussions I can find on this and it was suggested to rename the file and folder it's in. I would do this, except now it appears as though the system has deleted the file from its location. The only way I can get to the file is in word > open as I have it pinned. But of course it doesn't actually 'open', but just takes me to the aforementioned error message. If I right click the pinned document in Word I cannot execute any other actions ie sharing, and opening the file location does open where the file WAS, but it is no longer there.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[#2]

Hello.
the decisive thing is where you saved it?
because files that are only opened e.g. on the site and you do not save them are simply read without location.
And the local file is assigned a path - if you move it to another folder it is there but for the application it is removed from the correct location.

[#3]

Hi @A1 it was saved in a folder on an external hard drive, so its path was something like F:/MISC/writing.

I did not move it to any other folder, so Word shouldn't be behaving like I have. Until it disappeared from everywhere except my pinned documents in the Word 'Open' page, it remained in the same file location it has always been in, which is why this error was so unexpected.

[#4]

This behavior may be due to security.
File Explorer > external drive, after searching - it should open in Word - if it does not do this is some error.

[#5]

Thanks @A1, unfortunately since the file has seemingly disappeared from everywhere except the pinned documents in the word program, searching from File Explorer yields no results for the missing file. It must be another error then. Thank you for your suggestions though!

[#6]

@RubyMay 

Hello! You've posted your question in the Tech Community Discussion space, which is intended for discussion around the Tech Community website itself, not product questions. I'm moving your question to the Microsoft 365 space - please post Microsoft 365 questions here in the future. 

[#7]

Hello, have you found a solution to this issue? I'm experiencing the same thing and I hope you could help. Thanks

[#8]

Hi there,
Unfortunately I didn’t find a solution to this problem :( I just had to accept that the file was lost, and since then I now back all my work up on the cloud just in case.