ANNOT files not opening--lost all of my annotations!

I know the annotations and highlights saved when I was reading the book on my Kobo--I looked at them. But once I hooked my Kobo up to DE to download a different book onto my Kobo, the annotations went away, both in DE and on the actual device. I looked in the annotations folder, and while I see the file listed, it won't open in DE or any other program. A