Re: I use light room on both my desktop and laptop, syncing catalog via google drive. I have been working on the desktop all week, editing a collection in lightroom. this morning i opened the program however to find only an old version of the catalog. All

I have no idea what happened, why you are seeing what you are seeing.

My only guess at finding the missing work is to look under File->Open Recent on both computers.

I do know that if you aren't making regular backups of your catalog file, and relying on synchronizing catalogs from one computer to another via the cloud, you are living very dangerously, and now you are going to pay the consequences of not making regular backups.