I unlinked__big mistake_models disappeared_and in a bind

okay so I have this file where some of it was appended in and some linked for a large project, and I am putting things together, and the linked is in place and I couldn’t move it and didn’t know off hand where the original was.
So… I unlinked the linked things, thinking I would then be able to edit it, of course this was a terrible mistake cause now they are all gone from the scene. And I don’t have a save point before i did this stupid thing.
But I had to move the object, it made no sense where it was and I could not delete.
I really dislike using linked instead of appended for this reason.

  1. Is there something else I could have done - for my future knowledge? 2) Is there anything I can do now?

I would post this blend file… but, this is a fgroup project of over a year’s work with 6 other people (or so), and I haven’t posted the blend file publicly in all this time… But if someone is kind enough to help I will send just them the file. If that is okay? I am sorry I don’t mean to be a pain,
And as you can tell from the problem I am in a really big bind at the moment.

My current plan I think will be to try and locate the original files and relink/append them (probably append), and go from there, but I don’t yet know how to do that. So I am trying to look it up now.

If you make a group of your objects, that you want to link, in their original files, then link the group to the new file, you will then be able to move, rotate and scale them in the scene in which they are linked.