“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.