Vista - document recovery

I use Windows Vista.
I was opening a saved document from my flashdrive and suddenly the document
closed & is no longer on the drive. I hadn't replaced it, although I do have
a different document on my hard drive that's got the same file name. (But I
hadn't "saved as" the flash drive copy on my hard drive yet.) I don't know
how to get to the "document recovery" pane. Every time I see the pane it it
tells me I have to install Word for the current user or something like that.
How else can I open the recovery pane, or is there anything you can do to
help me??