SAVING PROBLEM!!!

I cannot believe what happened. Our instructor sent us a zip folder of an unreal engine project. I downloaded it to desktop and started adjusting it. Although I created a new level and saved, and tried to zip the project multiple times it didn’t save anything. It says it is saved but in reality nothing saved. My 3 days of wok have gone after crashing. If you are designing a computer software that is working with folders at least the projects and the levels should be saved somewhere a folder inside the computer but nothing in autosaves also. It is totally unaccepted thing you should immediately solve this problem. There are so many other problems also but I am not even stating them involving file transfers, migrating etc. but you should solve the saving issue first. You don’t have rights to make people suffer like this. All my midterm project that I’ve been working on has gone!!!