I never found a solution, I was able to recover some of the work, then recreated what was missing.
An annoyance, for sure, but for development work, it might take me a day to solve a particular issue.
From experience in the early days (VB / C) I knew that the lost day could usually be made up in an hour or two, since I was retracing an effective path towards a known solution.
Not much consolation for you, I'm afraid.
What I do is to make "offline" backup copies every day. It's a simple "Save As" to my OneDrive for Business account.
For OneDrive, I have the "Always keep on device" setting applied, so I have a local copy of the app file for redundant backup in case OneDrive loses it.
Also, quarterly backups on a rotating pool of removable drives, just in case. Malware won't get to these easily <g>
The MSAPP files are quite compact, just as long as you don't load them down with media. For example, rather than embed icon images, I use links to an Azure location.
