I created 5 files, exported it as a wav file to my google drive, checked that they were there and listened to them. The next day, I am trying to access those files from another computer yet all 5 are missing. Are they lost forever or can I not access exported files except on the machine in which it was created? I did NOT save the projects in .au. I just exported them.
It is not recommended to use Audacity across a network - there is too much that can go wrong that is entirely beyond the control of Audacity. I don’t know enough about Google Drive to know if data recovery is possible, but for future reference, always work on your local hard drive, then, if you wish to store the files remotely, copy the files to the remote drive. When storing important work on cloud based storage I would highly recommend that you also retain a reliable backup somewhere.
I can confirm that the .wav files are still on my google cloud drive locally (where I initially exported them) but cannot access these same .wav files on google cloud on any other computer. I even tried copying them over locally but no luck. Not much to do - more of an FYI as I’ve never saved any type of file on a cloud drive, accessed it on that same drive, and not been able to even see the file on another computer.