How do I "crop to selection"?

I am running Linux Mint 20, with Audacity 2.3.3 as installed from Mint’s package manager.

I would like to do the equivalent of a GIMP “Crop to Selection,” but my selection does not appear to fully register as a selection.

As far as I can tell from the bottom of the screen, I have selected the few minutes I wanted from a track lasting a couple of hours. When I hit the “play” button, it plays the minutes’ worth of audio I want.

However, if I try to e.g. cut or copy the selection so I can paste it in a new document, it doesn’t seem to register that I have made a selection; when I click the scissors on the toolbox, I get the following dialog:

Trying to cut from the Edit menu also doesn’t work.

How can I excerpt a shorter selection from a longer audio document? I am open to different approaches such as cropping the original video to a selection or copying a selection and pasting it into an empty new document.


Thanks,

You have a “time selection” but no “track selection”.

The easiest way to make a selection is to simply click and drag on the waveform. There are also other ways: Selecting Audio - Audacity Manual