MS Excel 2003 Spreadsheet Erased

I recently had an Excel 2003 (Windows XP) spreadsheet apparently erased or mysteriously replaced with the default spreadsheet. The Spreadsheet name is: "Friday Golf Bunch.xls". The spreadsheet contained three individually named worksheets, all with data in them. I accessed the file in the morning and all was well. When I opened the file (original file name still saved on my disk) later in the day, my original worksheet was replaced by the Excel default worksheet. I.E. all my worksheets and data were gone, all cells were blank. The worksheets at the bottom of the excel spreadsheet were named "Sheet1, Sheet2, and Sheet3".

I have never had this happen before. The file name is still there, but all my data is GONE. I have done several searches on the file name, including C and D drives and all hidden files and the only file found is the one with all my data deleted. It would seem nearly impossible that an erroneous keystroke on my part would wipe out my original file.

I've given uphope of recovering my data, but would like to know if anyone has any idea how this could have happened/ Would like to avoid a reoccurence with another file.

Ideas?

Thanks

 

The only way I can think that you lost the data, was if, for some reason, you clicked the top left corner of the spreadsheet to copy the whole page, as I have done in years gone by, and accidently caught the delete button when pressing the enter button, as it is alongside it- but to lose three pages seems beyond that.
If you have the autosave set , then there may be a copy somewhere, but maybe not.