change document view when attaching to email

I've had XP for years and found it easy to use. I've only had Vista for a couple of weeks and it has been problematic. Some things I can live with, but this document view is about to drive me insane.
If I click on documents from the menu, I have no problems finding what I need, but when I am writing an email and click attach, when it opens my documents they are not organized the same way. When trying to attach, it opens the folders first. With XP, I had the choice of opening folders or an individual document. I can't find that option here. It would be nice to have the option?When I change the view to list or detail, it still will not give me the document I was working on a minute before. If I click date modified it doesn't show the most recent documents, if I keep clicking it goes back to the folders. I can't believe it is really this hard. I have to be doing something wrong.Nobody would take a system that works beautifully and intentionally make it so hard it takes 10 minutes to locate and attach a document you were just working on a minute ago. When I try entering the name of the document in the search bar, it does not come up either. Any explanation of how to simplify this process would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Jackie