I have been saving an audacity project on a USB stick as I have been working on it. After I saved it this most recent time, I got an error message telling me something had quit working and only gave me the option of quitting the program. I did and reopened it, expecting the usual “recover project” option to pop up. It didn’t however, and my “.aup” file has been replaced with a “.BAK” file. When I try to open the “.BAK” file, I just get a message saying I can’t open it and to try to open the “.aup” file, which no longer exists. Is there a way to change the “.BAK” file back to a “.aup” ? I have hours of work invested in this project, but virtually no computer know-how.
What version of Windows, Mac or Linux? Please see the pink panel at the top of the page.
If you are used to seeing crashes something is wrong. Is it the same project that keeps crashing?
If you are investing hours in a project, please export WAV files periodically. Then if the AUP file goes wrong you can import the WAV file.
Audacity 2.0.x versions should not create .BAK files. Do you have a file maintenance application that does that?
I am not guaranteeing it will help because there should not be a .BAK file, but you will have to rename the file. You will need to turn on showing file extensions. If you don’t know how to do that, that’s why you should have posted in the board for your operating system.
The “extension” is the last three or four letters after the last dot (period) in the file name. So now you can see the extension, rename this BAK file so that it says AUP after the last dot in the name. If the project was called “My Song” make sure the file name is “My Song.AUP” and not “My Song.BAK” or “My Song.AUP.BAK”.
If that works you will still lose the changes since the last time you saved the project.