Saving an audacity project and using it

I hope this is easy, and it should be, but i haven’t been able to do it yet. So, i save an audacity project without exporting, because i’m not done messing with the tracks, etc, but then when i try to return to the project, i just get a matroshka doll list of files in files and nowhere is my project. What i’ve been doing is, after working on my project, i go to file, save as, give my project a name, but then i can never get it back. HEWP! Tried looking through the manual index, but nothing seems to explain this

There are two parts to a project: A “project file” that has an “AUP” file extension, and a “folder” that contains lots of little audio clips. It sounds like you are trying to open the folder rather than the file. Both the file and the folder are essential parts of the project, and need to be kept together (as they are when you save the project).

By default, Windows hides the file extension, which is not very helpful. See here for how to make Windows show the file extension: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/865219/how-to-show-or-hide-file-name-extensions-in-windows-explorer

For more information about how to manage Audacity projects, see: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/audacity_projects.html

Thank you for the reply. And it seems no wonder why i can never use the file i saved, seems unseemly complicated… I’ll follow those links when i have some time and see if i can sort it out.