All my files have missing data

I haven’t used Audacity in awhile, but when I did (probably last February) I made a bunch of recordings that were 20 minutes long for videos. Now I was about to export them as an mp4 or AIFF but when I open them, they give me the error message “Warning: Missing Audio Data Block Files”. I’m fairly certain I didn’t delete them, as I don’t even know what they are, and I haven’t messed with the files on the recordings. This happens with all 8 or so of the recordings I had. I am using Audacity 2.1.2 on Mac OS X El Capitan. I haven’t updated anything since the last time I opened Audacity and recorded the files. Can anyone help me?

An Audacity project consists of 2 parts: 1) the AUP file (which describes the project) and 2) the _data folder (which contains the actual audio). They must exist in the same directory (folder). See this page in the manual.

When you get that message it often means you have moved the AUP file but not the _data folder that goes with it.

So, if you have a project named “MyProject.aup” do a search for “MyProject” and see if it comes up with a folder named “MyProject_data”. Move one (or both) of those so they are in the same folder. Continue with the other 7 projects.

– Bill

That check for missing block files happens when opening the project, and if the _data folder and AUP file were in different folders when you opened the project you would see the different message that the _data folder could not be found. So I am guessing the problem goes deeper than AUP file and _data folder being separated.

If you still have this problem, do Help > Show Log… and post what that shows.


Gale