See "How to recover a lost file" in:
Word 2003: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=827099
Word 2002: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=316951
Word 2000: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=316950
Each article has a section on how to access Word's autorecovery
files.

whidbeytomas wrote:

Actually, I am trying to access temporary versions of a lost word file. I
find these in the temp folder but they are invariably useless. I thought
that if I could open the document recovery pane I might find a recovery file
there, but I can't figure out how to open it. Does anyone know?