Kaveri medappa

I lost three years worth of notes becaue I was trying to do a CtrlA and CtrlF to find something specific. Before I knew it, all the notes were erased and the words I types to 'find' in teh notes was all that remained in my notes. I've tried to restore previous versions but my web version doesn't allow me to modify the date updated to restore to an earlier version. I'm very frustrated and need those lost notes. I cannot believe it's so damn hard to recover notes.