Ideally, I would be able to use a program like
find [file or directory name]
to report the paths with matching filenames/directories. Unfortunately this seems to only check the current directory, not the entire folder.
I've also tried locate and which, but none find the file, even though I know its on the computer somewhere.
"Unfortunately this seems to only check the current directory, not the entire folder". Presumably you mean it doesn't look in subdirectories. To fix this, use find -name "filename"
If the file in question is not in the current working directory, you can search your entire machine via
find / -name "filename"
This also works with stuff like find / -name "*.pdf", etc. Sometimes I like to pipe that into a grep statement as well (since, on my machine at least, it highlights the results), so I end up with something like
find / -name "*star*wars*" | grep star
Doing this or a similar method just helps me instantly find the filename and recognize if it is in fact the file I am looking for.