Export Audio doesn't follow input or prompt

Audacity 2.1.2
Windows 10 x64

Just ran into this one…

Assume 2 directories, ‘A’ and ‘B’. In ‘A’, have files ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’. Have files with the same names in ‘B’.

Edit files in directory ‘A’ by dragging from Explorer window to Audacity. Export the edited audio, with no filename changes. Works as expected, overwriting the originals with the edited versions.

Changed Explorer window to directory ‘B’.

Drag files from new directory and drop on Audacity window. Edit and choose ‘Export Audio’. Get a message that a file by that name exists, do you want to overwrite? Choose ‘yes’.

After editing and exporting several files, mostly shortening them, I noticed that the file sizes in the Explorer window look the same… hmm…

Drag one of them back into Audacity, and the file has NOT been edited - it is still the original.

Try editing again and exporting… still no change.

Try a 3rd time, this time reading closely… and see that the dialog asking if I wanted to overwrite is pointing to directory ‘A’, not ‘B’, the directory I changed to!! Since there were files in both directories with the same name, I wound up losing both originals and edits in ‘A’ due to overwriting them with edits from ‘B’.

Audacity didn’t ask me which directory I wanted to export to, and I have done this so many times in the past and had it work correctly… it appears to be a new bug introduced in a recent revision. At the very least, it is definitely ‘broken’ in 2.1.2.

I thought dragon-drop was one of the known problems in 2.1.2.

Koz

It’s not a new bug, in fact a missing feature. Audacity has never changed the target directory to where the file comes from, unless you are saving a project, in which case the save project path will change.

The overwrite warning shows you the file path, but of course if you’re expecting it to be something else you may not see it. Sorry for your data loss.

If you like. you can allow us to count your (completely anonymous) “vote” for this feature. I’ve been pressing for it for a long time and there is a chance it might happen in the release after next.



Gale

First, I gave the wrong version… I have 2.1.3.

Please do count my vote for this feature. It is definitely what I expected to happen.

I was positive it used to ask me where to write exported audio in the past… but maybe not. :-\

Done.

Gale