Files Recovered, but not the files I need

OK, I'm an ID-10-T. I have a Windows 8.1 laptop. I keep ALL files that I create on an external hard drive that was in one of my older desktop computers. Recently I had the opportunity to move my data from the older drive to a new external drive. Windows 8.1 copied the directory structure of the old drive to the new drive, but did not move the files themselves. I did not notice this until 'after' I had done a hard format of the original external drive. NOTHING has been done with the original external drive and I began looking for a way to recover the drive. I finally settled on Recuva and purchased it. Took 8 hours to run the recovery and it found about 35,000 files, but none of those files are from the format. The files that were recovered appear to be files that were on the drive when it was being used in the old desktop. I noticed in the settings that there is a checkbox for formatted hard drives. It was not checked by default, so I'm restarting the scan, but one thing I am wondering is if the software can recognize the new .docx, ,xlsx, .pptx, etc. formats used by Office? Also, is it possible that the hard format destroyed the data?