Can you trace a certificate of completion if you don’t have the hard copy and it is not in iperms?

On JKO and ALMS, you have an archive of all completed courses and certs.
For 1059 producing schools, who should submit a 1059 direct to iPERMS, they should retain copy on local file for a few years.
If it was a one-off, in person training where they generated and handed out certificates, probably not.

If you can't find it on JKO, ALMS or whatever system you used to complete that certificate, and you don't have a hard copy, then you're not probably going to find it.

Usually certificates are held in the system where you took your on-line training from. Those systems also usually e-mail them to you. So you can likely find it in your old e-mails.

Then as mentioned 1059's are usually iPerm'd, and as such, anything iPerm'd is still your problem if it's lost. Certificates are NOT going to be iPerm'd. They "can" but almost never are.

If you took the training as a brief for everyone in your unit and signed a training attendance roster and then depended on your training NCO to input the training into DTMS, only now being required to show the certificate as apart of a deployment or school enrollment, well then you're screwed.

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Finally........... I see you are a Food Services Specialist. That's Awesome. I'm a Quartermaster Officer myself. What is NOT AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Is that EVERY SINGLE TIME!!!!!!!!!!!! I do training out of Ft Lee none of my training ends up getting updated in the system. My BOLC training didn't hit the system (even though my 1059 got iPerm'd) and my Captains Course for Logistics did not hit the system (in the system I am not yet annotated as a Logistical CPT).

I would like to think it's me, but my peer field grade USAR officers have this problem as well.

If your training certificates are coming out of Ft Lee school house and MOS related house you might have bigger problems on your hands that will take your S1 and G1 to fix with commander memos. But yes, you'll still need those certificates in hand to make that fix.