Disappearing Pages document in Ventura and Sonoma

I have been working on a long paper, labeling topic sentences with numbers to try to keep versions in different languages synchronized. I had been working for half a day or so on one file to make sure a dozen or so quotes paragraphs had all been included from the originals. In the process I opened another Pages document to check on something, When I went back to the document I had been working on, it was gone. That has happened before with Graphic Converter. But in that case when I saved and closed other image documents, the missing document reappeared on my desktop. I never had this kind of problem until Ventura and Sonoma came on the scene. I'm getting rid of the computer that I upgraded to Sonoma and now only ships with Sonoma because it constantly "helps" by doing something that I am trying to do. Ventura has fewer crazy behaviors, so that is what I am stuck with.

Could Pages be trying to save the disappeared file to iCloud?

Since I don't want my crucial files on Apple's servers. I haven't turned iCloud on.

Thanks for any ideas.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]