I just figured it. It only took me a day and a half. When clicking on the “tools tool bar” or even the “meter tool bar” it brings them out more. I am talking about when you click on the right side of the bar. I was going nuts trying to figure out how to get them back in. Clicking on them again does nothing. I had to go to reset tool bars. Question: shouldn’t a person just be able to click on it again to make it go back into place. Just an idea.
Trouble is there isn’t really a “place” that the toolbars belong in -just a set of default positions that they start out in. The whole point is that you can drag them around and re-size them - and having done that most folk want them to stay put.
TIP: perhaps the most useful one to re-size is the meter toolbar which is uselessly small in it’s default size - I have mine stretched acrosss the whole window width.
You must have clicked in just the wrong place
On the left edge of each toolbar is a vertical bar. That bar enables you to pull the toolbar out of its docked position and move it anywhere else on your screen, or dock it in a different position in the main Audacity window.
It’s documented in the manual under “Toolbars Overview - including how to arrange Toolbars” http://manual.audacityteam.org/manual/help/manual/man/toolbars_overview.html