How to open a project that was recorded in Audacity 2.4.2 in the newest version of Audacity

Hi! I recorded an entire song on Audacity for the first time in a long time, so I did not think about the fact that I was using an old version of Audacity. I finished the song and I saved the project. When I later tried to open the project file, Audacity would open but the project would be blank. I looked it up and saw that I needed to download the ffmpeg, so I downloaded the correct one and was able to locate the ffmpeg library through Audacity preferences. Then when I tried to open the project, it would give an error message saying that it could not open my file.

The next thing I tried is upgrading Audacity to the newest version 3.3.3. I downloaded and located the ffmpeg library for this version. But it still will not open the project. The error message says “Audacity does not recognize this type of file”.

It really doesn’t matter for me if I can get it to open in the newer version, or if I have to redownload the old version again. I am finished recording and editing in this project and I just need to open this project so that I can export all the tracks as wav files. Please advise on how I can get this project to open.

Thank you for your help!

Audacity 3 will open either one, but they have to be correct.

An Audacity 2 Project consists of an aup file and a _data folder of the same name. Both have to be in the same folder or directory or they won’t be able to find each other. The aup file has all the instructions how to put the show together from all the little sound files inside the _data folder.

The newer Audacity3 parks everything inside one aup3 file. It was a super common mistake with the older Audacity to think that the aup file had everything in it. It doesn’t.

Koz

Thanks for your reply. I forgot to mention in my original post that I do have both the AUP file and the data folder in the same folder and it is still not opening in Audacity. Is there a way that I can attach a Zip folder with my AUP file and data folder on here so that maybe you could take a look at it and see if it opens in Audacity for you?

Thank you!

There’s a 20MB data limit on the forum. Maybe someone else will post.

How long is the show?

Do you get an error message?

There are some tests. Your _data folder should have a bunch of little AU files. Each AU file should open in Audacity and play about 6 seconds. The AU files are randomly named on purpose and in a stereo show, they alternate Right-Left.

The filenames were a constant problem since there was no good way to rescue a show without the AUP file.

If you have nothing in the _DATA folder, that’s the end of the show.

Koz

Hi, yes I do have about 300-400 files in the data folder, and when I open up a file, it does play a 6 second clip in Audacity with my recording. So the data is there, but for some reason, the whole project will not open up.

Open up the aup file in a text editor and read it. I used Mac TextEdit.

Screen Shot 2023-11-01 at 17.49.15

The fourth line of programming down, near the right, is the original name of the project. I bet a lot of chocolate the “real” name of the project and what you’re calling it are different.

Everything has to match the name inside the aup file programming.

Koz

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