Mesing about just to save a file

Audacity 3 Help Forum Windows
1

When exporting a file:

“warning – you are about to save a wave file with …etc etc…"

And

Not being able to overwrite files unless you type in the extension each time - and you still end up with ‘-old1’.

Why all this bother and having to go through all this trouble simply to save a file with the same name ? We know the ‘dangers’ of replacing an original file… but it’s something most of us choose to do! It just leads to confusion, especially when you need to edit multiple files quickly and without this nonsense.

I preferred using Audacity because of its simplicity – but now whenever I need to edit existing files I open CoolEdit.

2

The support team got tired of explaining to so many users how they had destroyed all of their own hard work and irreplaceable recordings.

Assuming that you have read these warning messages you will have seen that there is an option for “don’t show again”.

3

You can control which warnings appear by doing Edit > Perferences > Warnings and ticking/unticking the boxes.

4

To clarify some things…

You rightly cannot turn off warnings about overwriting the same file.

This warning occurs if you save a file with one or more dots in the file name. Again, you cannot turn this warning off. Audacity does not supply the extension for file names that include dots so that users can add unusual extensions for a file type if they need to. See Audacity Manual .

I’m inclined to agree most users want to keep the original file name with dots and keep the original file format extension, so I’d like to see this as an option you can check or uncheck when you export.

This is because if you don’t copy the WAV file into the project, Audacity needs an audio file in its original state before you overwrote it, in case you decide to undo an edit back to a previous state. So Audacity renames the original file as “-old” when you save new content with the original file name.

To avoid having “old” files to clean up, go to the Import / Export Preferences and underneath “When importing…”, choose “Make a copy of uncompressed audio…”.

If you go back to an old enough Audacity you will find the project is broken after you overwrite the file it depends on. At least we don’t do that any more.



Gale