I have recently purchased a turntable/cassette player to burn records etc to cd. I have Windows Media Player. How do I instruct Audacity 2.0 to export saved music to Windows Media Player so I can burn the CD.
I have already downloaded all instructions etc. It still doesn’t tell me how to actually export the file. I have gone into export, save as and saved to my music (windows media player) but the WAV file is not appearing. I need more advice before I send the whole unit back for a refund. The written Instructions are practically unintelligable, is there anyone on this list who speaks correct English who can talk me through the process step by step? 
Forget any Audacity “instructions” that came with the equipment you purchased. You export in Audacity by clicking File, then Export… . That opens the File Export Dialogue:
[1] Audacity Manual .
If you now read [2] Audacity Manual does it solve your difficulty?
Other points:
- The WAV files will only appear as “song name” (not “song name.wav”) in Windows Explorer. This is a Windows problem.
- Follow the instructions in the green box in link [2] to drag the WAV files from Windows Explorer into the Windows Media Player playlist, and then from the playlist to the burn list.
If you still have problems, click Help > About Windows Media Player and tell us which version number of Media Player you have.
Gale
Thank you Gale, will have another go. I have never had such problems with a programme in all my years of computering. It has literally got me tearing my hair out by the roots. 
My song or album doesn’t appear ANYWHERE in Media Player. When I go into Export, Save I have no idea where to save the file to, there are NO INSTRUCTIONS anywhere to tell me. Where in Explorer would I find the files I have been ‘exporting’ or ‘saving’? I have done it so many times they must be somewhere in my computer. I am currently using version 4.1 of Media Player. Please help or the unit will be going back on Monday. Even if you need CD burning software in addition to Audacity is it askin too much to expect Audacity to acknowledge other software automatically?
In the File menu you will see an option for “Save”. This option saves the Audacity Project. An Audacity Project is not an audio file (further information: http://manual.audacityteam.org/manual/help/manual/man/audacity_projects.html )
In the File menu there is another option: “Export”. You need to “export” the audio from the Audacity Project to make a normal audio file that other programs can understand.
On Windows one would normally export to “My Music” or to a sub-folder of My Music.
People can export where they like if they have permissions to save there. Audacity is not just for burning WAV files in Windows Media Player.
If you just click File > Export and don’t Save, the window will open to the last location you exported to, so you can tell that way.
Remember, you have to look for the name of the song in Explorer, not for WAV files.
Version 4.1 of Media Player does not sound correct. What version of Windows?
If I were you I would export to your Desktop, then open the Windows Media Player Library and drag the file with your mouse from the Desktop into the Library. Then you can see what you are doing. You will still have to make sure you burn as an audio CD and not a data or music CD, but get the WAV file visible in Media Player first .
Gale
Joanh, I am not being rude, but how much do you know about computers, it sounds like you do not know the basics aboput saving and retrieving files, if this is so then say so and i will try to explaine the routine to you. again i am not being rude, just asking a question so that the forum can help you better.
Joan,
With your Audacity projct open in front of you proceed as follows:
Select the track (or one of the tracks) by clicking anywhere in empty space in its Track Details panel at the left side of the track. The track background will go a darker shade of grey.
Now using the command bar at the top of the screen do File > Export Selection. This will open the Export File dialogue window.
Key in whatever file name you want the file to have (using only alphabetic and numeric characters, dash and underscore)
Set “Save as type” to "WAV (Microsoft) signed 16-bit PCM
Set “Save in” (at the top of the dialogue window) to be Desktop (so that you know where to look for the WAV file)
Click on Save
Now go to your Windows Desktop and visually find the WAV file there. If you have a standard set of file associations this file should then play in Windows Media Player if you double-click the file’s icon.
When you are ready to try setting up for a CD burn, I suggest you go to your “My Music” folder and create a new sub-folder in it called “CD Burn items”. You can then do the File > Export Selection again but direct the WAV file to be saved in this location rather than on the desktop. Once you have all the items that you want in this folder, you can then try and get Windows Media Player to accept these files as input to a CD burn. I cannot help you on this last stage as I don’t use WMP to do my CD burns.
I wish joahn will be able to understand the instructions, but I guess it will be too hard.
I do regularly teach how to use computers to people with no skill at all like sometimes they are not even able to use the mouse so by reading the previous attempts to help him and his replays, I feel like he needs some very basic computer training first instead of giving the fault to “badly” written English instructions.
I do appreciate that I must seem like an idiot or half wit but I have been using computers for many years and have been burning CD’s successfully for many years. There is a huge gap in the instructions as so often happens when they have been translated by a non English speaking person. I am perfectly capable of saving files, however, they are not appearing in “my music” after I have saved them and on the one occasion it did, it didn’t appear in my media library so I was unable to ‘click and drag’. I have to say I don’t like your attitude just as I didn’t like the attitude of the person I spoke to on the telephone (I imagine this comment will mean that my post will not be approved?). I bought the product in good faith and expect to be able to use it for the purpose it was bought for so I expect I will return it and shop around for a product which works and which has adequate back up. I really am so disappointed and will make my feelings heard when I send in the feedback to ebay.
I will keep trying for a couple of days and will follow your most recent advice before I give up on the product all together.
Thank you PGA for concise easy to follow instructions. I will give it a go. I know there is only one small, simple step I am missing, hopefully your post will let me perform the final most important step.
We have no control over what instructions are provided by other companies. We recommend that for using Audacity you use the documentation that is provided in the Audacity manual and the Audacity wiki.
The Audacity manual is available in the Help menu of the standard Windows version of Audacity 2.x and is also available on-line: Audacity Manual
The Audacity wiki contains a lot of additional help, including tutorials and is available here: Missing features - Audacity Support
The company that you bought your turntable/cassette player from is not affiliated or endorsed by Audacity.
Audacity is free software that may be downloaded and used free of charge.
This support forum is “staffed” by unpaid volunteers who are fellow Audacity users. We will do our best to help you but if you have any complaints about a product that you have purchased you will need to take that up with the company that you bought it from.
Good luck with the instructions from PGA but let us know if you still have problems and we’ll do our best to get you going.
Thanks for the prompt replies, we are giving it one more go but the whole saga is ridiculous. You buy a product which promises you can convert vinyl records into digital format and burn CD’s. You then have to download unrelated software, instructions which come with the software relate to an earlier version so all the diagrams etc are nothing like what actually appears on the screen so you then download instructions from the website. Still all diagrams bear no relationship to what appears on the screen. You are then told that the software which comes with the product doesn’t actually do the job for which you bought the product, i.e. to copy music from vinyl and cassette to CD so you need additional software. Nothing seems to be compatible, every time I ask a question I am directed back to the instructions I have downloaded which are incomprehensible. And to add to that, one of your ‘volunteers’ suggests I am illiterate, know nothing about computers. Perhaps I should go back to the days of wind up gramophones?
Well, PGA, I followed all your steps, turned out I have been doing exactly that all along except for saving to desktop. When I double click on the WAV icon it opens in ‘Irfanview’ - which is the software I use for editing photos etc and although it appears to be playing, there is no sound. This happened one other time when I did actually save to My Music and tried to open the file. I am now thoroughly confused. The only thing I can think of is to unistall and install the audacity software again? There really is something wrong here, I am convinced of that. Any further suggestions from anyone???
Good, at least you can see the files.
Right click on the exported files and select “Properties”.
I don’t think that you’ve told us which version of Windows you are using. If you’re using Windows XP you can look on the “Summary” tab and it will give information about the file. If you’re on some other version of Windows it will probably be similar though possibly not quite the same. What you are looking for is the file type, the Audio format and the sample rate. If you’ve done it right then the file should be a WAV, PCM, 16 bit.
If it is, then you are ready to burn it to a CD.
I don’t know how to do that on Windows Media Player because I think that Windows Media Player is a dreadful program and I never use it.
If you prefer to use Windows Media Player to make the CD, please go ahead and use it, however if you’re not sure exactly how to do that then I’d suggest using my favourite free CD burning program for Windows: CDBurnerXP CDBurnerXP: Free CD and DVD burning software See here for how to burn an audio disk with Cdburnerxp: CDBurnerXP: Create Audio Disc
Thanks everyone, I really am doing everything right, it just isn’t appearing on Media Player. Will try downloading the suggested software and see what happens, settings etc are all right as far as I can see.
OK, now we’re getting somewhere. That represents a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. It also indicates that you have the file extension WAV associated with Irfanview and not with Windows Media Player. Try this next:
Right click on the WAV file icon on the desktop
Select “Open with…” and, if WMP is displayed there as an option, select it.
Does the file now play in WMP and can you hear it playing?
I know this refers to my replay but I never said that you’re illiterate, what I wanted to say is that by the previous instructions given to you on this thread let me summarize that you lack that specific knowledge and specifically dealing with files.
You can return your stuff to ebay if you like but you’ll make a big mistake because the problem is you not the poorly written English instructions.
You got specific links to Audacity Wiki from Admin and others so you still weren’t able to understand the problem.
Not a fault because anyone who come here is because in need of support.
And not I’m not a volunteer here, I’m just one like you or any one else enjoying this forum and Audacity.
You should admit you mistakes.