auto recovery is not working

After downloading Dvix update my word documents keep saying cannot save file too many documents open (only a couple) and then I found then states cannot autorecover. When I closed document I realised it was saving in doc. So I changed to docx. but when I went to reopen it was blank. This was quite an amount of time to do this work and I feel quite angry.

Any suggestions gratefully received - using snow leopard