How are you opening the file? Are you in Windows or Mac? Try starting the program first. Then it should show you your returns in a box to Continue. Or go up to File-Open. You must be clicking on the wrong file. Do your files show the extension? You may need to turn that on to see the extensions.
Did you search your whole computer for all files ending in .tax2024 etc?And check the recycle bin and your backups. Check in One Drive, Drop Box, etc. It should be in your Documents then in the Turbo Tax folder. Also if you have multiple Windows user accounts, log into each one and do the search for the *.tax2024 data file from within each one and checking the Recycle Bin in each one.
If you don't have the main .tax file you might have one that starts with a Tilde sign ~ like "~your name.tax2024". That file is if your computer crashes or your real file gets lost or deleted or corrupt so you can restore it.
Don't know if this will help any Turbo Tax users but one Quicken user found them......
What I found was that my Quicken Data files ended up in the One-drive Recycle bin. Not sure how, but I found them there. I placed the files back onto the laptop and brought the files into Quicken and now have all my data back.
How to find tax files on Mac
https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/tax-data-file/help/find-your-tax-data-file-in-mac/00/26206
