Lost several day's worth of work in an Excel file?

I have a an Excel spreadsheet (.xlsm) saved to OneDrive that I keep open on my home PC. I update it multiple times per day and hit CTRL-S out of habit after every edit but also have AutoSave on. Today while I was at work my PC at home rebooted for some update or something and Excel reopened itself and was displaying my file, with current data, but as a .xlsb file, with a warning that my macros were dangerous and it didn't know where my file came from, and, more notably, NO option to enable macros. I figured it was just a glitchy opening so I closed the file and declined to save it because I know, of course, that my proper .xlsm file was still on OneDrive, but when I opened the .xlsm file was from 8 days ago with over a week of missing data.

Fortunately, looking on here, I found the .xlsb file in my trash bin so I recovered it and just saved it as a .xlsm file over my original filename and I'm good now.

Soooooo this is obviously a thing, then? Today I opened up an Excel spreadsheet (which is now in Onedrive) that has the monthly readings from my solar panel output for the last 6 years, only to be told by the programme that was a problem with some of the data. When it did the file recovery I found it had lost a years worth of data and provided this message "Excel completed file level validation and repair. Some parts of this workbook may have been repaired or discarded". Yeah, like a years worth of data that I don't have a record of anywhere else. I appreciate this is only on a personal level and not business critical. I am now retired, but if this had happened to me when I was working on an important document I would have been incandescent! My sympathies (for what they are worth to everyone on this thread. MS and their support team should take careful note of this issue - if people can no longer trust the stability of their programs they will migrate elsewhere.

So its back to two separate backups (coz drives fail, don't they?) and a hard copy printed out. Jeez.

Thinks to self - am I too old to learn Linux?

Seems to be a frequent and recurring issue. Not the first time I've had this happen in excel and had to start all over again. I frequently save to PC and OneDrive to find the file is completely missing or a version from months before. Yes, I have tried all the previously mentioned steps, recovery on, check caches and temp ect. Not impressed. Trying to steer people away and use SPSS or other data management programs.

You're never too old to learn anything, Linux has some really good user friendly setups. Would recommend it on a separate machine though.

https://www.debugpoint.com/linux-distro-beginners/

FWIW, the same thing has just happened to me, and not for the first time. I have a file that I update with financial information every month and it has just reverted back to a version from over one year ago. For me it is a minor issue, but it has really eroded my trust in Microsoft. I'll try migrating to Google sheets