Unfortunately, having closed that pane, it is almost certainly gone. The
only thing that I could suggest is that you pull the plug out off the wall
to force another improper shut down and then restart and see if it once
again appears in the recovery task pane. You might be lucky, but if in the
meantime, you have shut down Word, you will be out of luck.

--
Please respond to the Newsgroup for the benefit of others who may be
interested. Questions sent directly to me will only be answered on a paid
consulting basis.

Hope this helps,
Doug Robbins - Word MVP
"Paige000" wrote in message
...
I had left an active document I was finished working on on the screen, and
after 30 minutes, my computer, Windows XP, automatically shut down. When I
turned it back on, the Recovery task pane popped up saying it had
recovered
the unsaved document, but I accidentally closed the window. How can I get
the
document back??