error no element found at line 1

new to audacity. spent a few hours recording a song last night. tried to load it today and received the following error

error no element found at line 1

the file saved without issue last night. any advice is appreciated

windows 7 professional
audacity 2.0.3

i installed it awhile ago, i do not recall which installer i used.

2.0.3 is outdated now. I suggest you update to 2.0.5 http://audacityteam.org/download/windows .

It is best to export a WAV file as soon as you complete recording, even if you also want to save an Audacity project.

Please attach the AUP file so we can look at it. Please see https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/how-to-attach-files-to-forum-posts/24026/1 for how to attach files.


Gale

The song was not finished.

Is exporting a wav file a common way to avoid the error I received?

The recording step was finished, otherwise you could not have quit Audacity. WAV backups at each stage of a complex project are always a good idea.

WAV is a unitary file format. Audacity Projects are a complex format, where an AUP file has entries pointing to large numbers of AU files in a _data folder for the project. The AUP file is written last, after all the AU files have been moved from the Audacity temporary folder to the _data folder for the project.

Unless you have fixed the problem, I suggest you attach the AUP file. We can’t see what the problem is unless you do that.


Gale