Can an excel file be lost, when switching to outlook?

[Gingia]

I was helping a friend trying to recover lost info in an .xls worksheet.
They'd spent a day keying in new data, and it was printed in red. They had
not saved the info since earlier that day. The phone rang, and they switched
to Outlook to send an e-mail to someone on a totally unrelated subject. But
when they went back to XL, the new data was missing. They said they weren't
queried as to whether they wanted the data saved, and the file was lost. My
thinking was that it was not lost, but I could not find it either. I also
thought this might be from my unfamiliarity with notebook computers (opposed
to desktop). Does anyone know how to resolve this problem? I'd like to be
able to tell the guy what happened and how to resolve it in the future.

Thanks!

 

[Michael]

Eliminating the obvious... check whilch work sheet you are on.
Did it simply get minimized to the bottom of the workbook.
Was it saved - You can tell if it was saved by opening Excel and seeing if
it is listed as a file in the File menu. If it is not there and you have that
feature enabled, then I would say that the file is lost.