Editable PDF form fields wiped

Hi,

I’m trying to work out whether there’s any way to recover this or whether I need to accept it and start again.

I’ve been working on a 76 page fillable PDF in Acrobat for a few weeks and entered a lot of text into the form fields. I saved regularly, but I always opened and saved the file through Acrobat. If I opened the same PDF directly from Windows File Explorer, it would appear blank (questions present, but no text in the form fields). Because of this, I assumed they were effectively separate versions.

Yesterday, I used the trim / delete pages tool in Acrobat to reduce the document to the last 8 pages so I could send it to my tutor. I did this using what I thought was the “blank” version opened from Windows.

This morning, when I opened Acrobat, all of the form data was gone. Acrobat now shows three copies of the file, all 76 pages, all with empty form fields (layout and questions still intact). In the recent files list there are no older versions showing with the filled in data.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to restore a previous version but haven’t had any luck so far. Just trying to understand if there's any chance of recovering it, or if it's permanently gone.

Any guidance would be appreciated. Thanks.