All recent Word files vanished after system restore and the only restore points remaining are from 2012- help?

[Nur I]

I had some kind of malware/adware that installed itself and deleting it didn't work av didn't work. So I used system restore to restore it to day before.
Now it seems my recent word files are all
gone! Anything that was on the recent list has disappeared! And the only restore points the system offers me now is from 2012. And the adware is still there popping ads on chrome! I'm
Running a malware program now. But how/why did my word files vanish? Search or auto recover are not working. And it seems to have selected certain files- only the recently opened ones.
It is crazy making. Any ideas?
I knew system restore wasn't supposed to delete files and i should be able to undo it, but as i said all my system restore points had dissapeared all the way back to 2012 and i had no way to undo. it is apparently right that malware messes things up. but i was actually was able to find the files. turns out I had refiled them! ooops :} i ran a couple more malware scans and i think computer is clean.
Thank you!