Reverted to old files? Where are the newer files?

I shut my MacBook down a week ago for vacation. When I restarted it today, ALL my SAVES from ALL of August are gone. I'm especially worried about my Excel and Word files. I also lost some but not all Messages (weird?).

I am a regular and frequent Saver, several times daily of those Excel & Word files. I update those files nearly daily. They are not in the Cloud, just on my laptop. No, I don't want to put them on the Cloud.

The date on the laptop is correct. My regular monthly backup would've been on Sep 1 and didn't happen since the laptop was off. It looks like I'm viewing the Aug 1 version of those files, not the 8/25 (last) version. How can I find those? I have of course Spotlight searched and they are just not found.

Thank you.