Good afternoon @James vail , thanks for joining us in the drop-in session! To be sure I understand correctly, do you mean that you created a new company file, but it doesn't appear in the list when you go to open it?
If that's the case, this article has a great list of troubleshooting options that may help to resolve the issue: What to do if you can't open your company file in QuickBooks Desktop
If none of these work, or I've misunderstood in any way, please let me know! We can continue to work through it together.
