Shadow Copies recovery - urgent assistance please

[themadlibs]

I hope I can make this clear. I went to open a file today, and discovered that I had apparently either selected "no" to save the new version of a document I was on, or I dreamed up the 12 hours of work missing on my .xlsx file. I know just enough to get myself into trouble but not nearly enough to actually figure out how to resolve my issues. I know precisely when I was working on the file, including when I closed the computer (thinking that I'd hit save and was fine). I also have it set to run autosave every 10 minutes, so I'm assuming this is all user error. 

Anyway, all previous versions I'm finding are the same version as the newest version, and when I ran Recuva this afternoon, the only interesting part I found was when searching in "All Shadow Copies" - I found a file extension .lnk that is from the exact same date / time that I *THOUGHT* I'd saved my work. This is for a thesis that needs completed in two weeks, so you can imagine my horror. Only in "All Shadow Copies" did I see this, and obviously it's not an .xlsx as I was expecting. I've attached a copy of the file that matches the date time, but obviously that's not getting me anywhere. Or perhaps it's not obvious, but I have no idea what to do with it. In Recuva, it showed with a path "\\hiddenshadow..." if that makes any sense. I'm *hoping* that perhaps the file is in some hidden shadow copy folder that I can eventually recover? Probably not...

Not sure if I make sense, but I'm desperate for assistance. 

 

Independent Study.lnk