See
Using Recuva to un-delete Writer temporary files for help recovering the temporary files which Writer wrote while you were editing the .odt file, and then deleted when Writer was closed. It does not work if you were editing a .doc file.
Search for files named something like TEMP_PATH\sv1kposb.tmp\sv1kv4ak.tmp, where TEMP_PATH is the Temporary files path set up in Tools > Options > OpenOffice > Paths; and
\sv1kposb.tmp\ is a
folder. Rename recoverred files with names like sv1kv4ak.
tmp to sv1kv4ak.
odt and try to open them. If what you were editing had images in it, some of the .tmp files will be images. You will need to show hidden files by Start > Control Panel > Folder options > View > tick Show hidden files.
It is a little strange for a
folder to have a name like "sv1kposb.tmp", with a dot in the name, followed by the three characters tmp, which make it look like a file, but that is what Writer does.
You are therefore looking to recover files with names like "C:\Users\John\AppData\Local\Temp\sv1kposb.tmp\sv1kv4ak.tmp" - note that there is a ".tmp" in the folder name AND a ".tmp" in the file name.
Always set
AutoRecovery to ON. This saves a copy of the file every few minutes while you are working on it - it protects you against things like power cuts, OS freezes etc. Do so by: Tools > Options > Load/Save > General ...
Always ?? set
Create A Backup copy to ON. This keeps the previously saved version of the file fred.odt as fred.bak in the Backup folder. Do so by: Tools > Options > Load/Save > General ... The Backup folder location is shown by Tools > Options > OpenOffice > Paths ... You may need to switch on Show hidden files (Start > Control Panel > Folder Options > View ...) to be able to see the folder and its contents.
Why the ?? ? Because you should remember that highly_personal.bak will still be in the Backup folder long after you have deleted highly_personal.odt.