Hello!
When I open an audacity project it opens without any sounds.
The length of the recording is the same as it was, except that there is only a flat line showing and no sound will play.
If anyone can help me recover this file to how it should be that would be amazing - thank you!
I am using Audacity 2.4.2 on a MacBookPro - macOS High Sierra version 10.13.6 
When you first attempted to open the project, I’m guessing that you got an error message about missing data files. What did you do after that error message?
When I open the project, I get a message:
Project check of “Episode 4_data” folder found 521 orphan block file(s). These files are unused by this project, but might belong to other projects. They are doing no harm and are small.
I selected the action: Continuing without deleting; ignore the extra files this session.
I am not sure what this message means exactly, although I have got this message before, selected the same action, and everything has been fine. I cam also see the flat line on the recording behind this error message when I open the project, which makes me think it is not related?
Audacity stores the project’s audio data as “block files” - small “.AU” files, usually about 1 MB each. The “.AUP” (Audacity Project file) contains instructions that tell Audacity how all of the block files fit together.
“orphan block files” are “block files” that are not registered in any current project. They can get left behind in Audacity’s temporary folder if Audacity was not able to clean up properly last time it closed. There’s usually no point keeping the orphan block files because it’s virtually impossible to work out where they came from.
Was that project created with Audacity 2.4.2, or with an earlier version of Audacity?
I don’t think it will be possible to recover this project, but if we understand what went wrong, we may be able to prevent it from happening again.
Thanks Steve.
Yes it was created with Audacity 2.4.2,
Any insights you have on why this would have happened or how to stop it from happening again (even if it unfortunately means I can’t recover this project) would be very much appreciated!
That rules out one theory.
The only thing I can think of is that perhaps on one occasion in the past, that project may have been open when the computer shut down, which could have caused data to be lost. All I can suggest is to be sure to always save all projects and completely shut down Audacity before shutting down the computer. I can’t think of a more likely explanation.