along with
kemical's informative reply:
did you go through
file-explorer to exact location of each file and try opening,
XynWill? if you remember the exact name of file … you may wish to search for it.
when's the last time you rebooted? i surmise the three text files automatically open on desktop
(upon reboot)? or do you manually open each file upon boot-up? do you have alternate user-names … if so, log-off and then log-on again.
how old is your drive/ram? did windows perform any updates? if all else fails, have you tried windows
system-restore back to previous point? keep in mind … any newly added text after that system-restore probably would have vanished.
there's also some free recover utilities* on the market which may assist you,
XynWill.
in the future:
• it is possible to pin each document to task-bar or to start-menu
• having a closed document might be safer than retaining an open document (esp. while away from computer).
• good idea to (periodically) perform "save-as" rather than simple "save" … far as i understand, the "save-as" procedure rewrites the complete data … whereas "save" only saves revised data.
• and, as you have witnessed … probably beneficial for you to save a copy of each file (every 8, 12, 24 hours) as backup to your usb-drive or similar.
*ref: