Cannot find AUP project file

Audacity Help Forum macOS
1

Hi,

I am using audacity 2.0.3 and Mac OS X 10.7.4 and had 2 ~35 minute recordings. Both of these large project files were initially on my computer’s harddrive. I tried to email the files and now I can only file the smaller pieces of each of the project files, but not the large project files. For each project, I have a a_data folder that includes several 5 second pieces of the larger project. Do you think I accidentally moved the project files to an incorrect location?

Is there a way to recover the larger project files?


Here is what I found under FAQs, but did not find information about recovering the larger files:
Audacity breaks long tracks into small pieces so it can edit them more efficiently. When you save an AUP project file, Audacity stores all the pieces in a _data folder that has the same name as the AUP file. For example, “song.aup” will open the pieces inside the “song_data” folder.

Thank you for your help.

2

The .AUP file and the associated _data folder must both reside in the same folder location as each other.

To check if the files still have the correct original names, make a copy (for safety) of the .AUP file, and open it in a text editor such as NotePad (don’t use a word processor). Near the top of the file you should be able to find the original project name.

Example:

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="no" ?> http://audacityteam.org/xml/audacityproject-1.3.0.dtd> " >

projname=“MyProject_data” > version=“1.3.0” audacityversion=“2.0.4-alpha-Feb 25 2013” sel0=“45.0009501309” sel1=“53.5683243740” vpos=“0” h=“0.0000000000” zoom=“7.0216073880” rate=“44100.0”>

3

Also see this page http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Sending_your_work_to_others#Sending_Projects_to_others . When you are sending Audacity projects to another computer then as well as the AUP file and the _data folder you need to copy in imported WAV or AIFF files to the project. A 35 minute project with all the AU files in the _data folder would usually be at least 350 MB - too large to e-mail.

In most cases it is better just to export a WAV file rather than save a project - see http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/audacity_projects.html . This is not a lot smaller but is without quality loss and is one self-contained file.


Gale

4

Thanks for your replies.

The files have the original names, but I am still unable to open them in audacity.

The error message says: "Error Opening Project: Couldn’t find the project data folder: ‘thefilename_data’ "

Is there a way to move the large file into a folder with the smaller files so that I can open the project? Is this impossible now?

Thanks for your help.

5

As previously explained, the _data folder needs to be in the same folder that the AUP file is in.

The _data folder should be called by the same name as the AUP file.

Here is an example, assuming your Desktop contains the file “focus.AUP” and the folder “focus_data”.

    [Folder "Desktop"]
                   |
    contains [Folder "focus_data"] and "focus.AUP"
                            |
             contains [Folder "e00"]
                            |
                      contains [folder "d00"]
                                     |
                               contains for example "e0000b5e.au", "e00002fe.au" ...

If you are still not sure, please attach the AUP file you are trying to open. Please see here for how to attach files: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/how-to-attach-files-to-forum-posts/24026/1 .



Gale

6

Gale, I’m having the same problem but I’m not understanding how to fix it. I’ve only been using Audacity for a few months, but this is the first time I’ve had this problem. I saved an interview as an aup file onto my desktop. I inadvertently moved it when I cleaning off some other files, and now Audacity says it can’t open the file. I still have the data file, and from everything I’ve read here, I just need to put everything in the same folder and it should open? Because I can’t seem to make it work. I appreciate any help you can offer.

7

This is the crucial issue.
Audacity does not save projects as aup files.
Audacity saves Audacity Projects, and an Audacity Project is made up of: A file with the file extension .AUP and audio data.

When you record something in Audacity, it does not create a data file, it creates dozens, hundreds or even thousands of data files. These data files are initially stored in the Audacity Temp folder, and when you save an Audacity project they are copied into a data folder.

For example, if you save an Audacity project as “MyProject” then Audacity will create a file called MyProject.aup and will create a folder called MyProject_data.
MyProject.aup is the Audacity project file, and this tells Audacity what to do with the files that are in the MyProject_data folder.
In this example, MyProject.aup and MyProject_data must be in the same folder (for example, both on your Desktop or both in “Documents” or both in “Music”)