do you lose old projects when you upgrade unity?

I upgraded unity.Can you load your old scenes and projects? When i click on recent projects it says the shortcut is broken.Did i screw up by not saving my projects somewhere before upgrading?

I dont think you screwed up. You should be able to save your projects wherever you want.

What happens if you just ignore the shortcut screen and load it in another way? Like double clicking any scene in Windows Explorer (or Mac Finder), or by clicking the button Open Another…

Also another thing I am using with all my projects is to enable Source Control Meta Files - this stores the additional information about your files along with the files themselves, which is very useful for source control or for making your projects portable. You can enable this in Project Settings > Editor > Version Control > Meta Files.