Audacity 2.3.2 on Windows 10.
I Exported a 19 minute audio recording as a WAV file to my Music library. IT will not play.Any suggestions
Windows 10 Media Player?
Restart Audacity. Will Audacity open it?
Koz
No, it will not open in Audacity.
When I exported the project as a WAV I didn’t give it a title. It appears in my library as a folder titled e08. When try to open it three sub-folders appear called d0f, d08, and d10. If I open one of these about a hundred files appear with titles all starting e0808+ 3 characters. I can copy them in one at a time but each file only lasts 3 or 4 seconds and they don’t seem to be in the order recorded.
This, my first project, was originally a 45 minute recording of someone’s life story which I edited down with lots of cuts and silences to about 19 minutes. I performed noise removal, normalization, equalization and compression before exporting. Looks like choosing a WAV file was a big mistake. My only other project so far I exported as MP3 and it worked fine.
I really appreciate help on this as it represents a lot of work.
When I exported the project as a WAV I didn’t give it a title. It appears in my library as a folder titled e08.
That’s a lot of problems in one place. e08 is one of the Audacity Project internal file or folder names. Nobody in the outside world is ever supposed to see those.
When I fail to assign a filename, Audacity forces one.
Does yours?
Did you get your Audacity from here?
Koz
each file only lasts 3 or 4 seconds and they don’t seem to be in the order recorded.
They’re six seconds long and you are not supposed to see them. An Audacity Project is a management file (AUP) and a folder (_DATA) with all the little sound snippets in it. This is an example.
If you have an edited show saved as a Project, the little sound files will be completely scrambled—again, you’re not supposed to be in there. The AUP file knows where everything is.
Do you see a WAV file called Untitled? If you’re in Windows, the machine will helpfully hide the “.wav” extension making it much harder to unstick yourself if something goes wrong. You can force Windows to show them to you.
What’s scary about this is WAV is the most universal, stable sound file format. You can’t edit an MP3 without causing sound distortion. You can go that way if you want, but it’s highly recommended you straighten out these errors.
Koz
Looks like choosing a WAV file was a big mistake. My only other project so far I exported as MP3 and it worked fine.
I don’t know what the problem was but that’s was NOT the problem…
WAV is pretty foolproof as long as you don’t have a very-long file that exceed the 4GB WAV file size limit. MP3 is mostly foolproof too, but it is compressed so the data is “scrambled”. A WAV file is just a short file header followed by numbers that represent the samples (i.e. 44,100 samples per second).
Audacity project files are NOT as foolproof (because there are multiple files, etc.) so I always recommend that you save a WAV file whether you make an Audacity project or not. In this case it didn’t help. 
And as you probably know, MP3 is lossy compression. It’s OK for a final-format but if you are going to re-edit later you’ll be going through another generation of lossy compression when you export to MP3 again, and the “damage” does accumulate.
This, my first project, was originally a 45 minute recording of someone’s life story which I edited down with lots of cuts and silences to about 19 minutes.
“Stuff happens”, especially with computers! The MOST important thing is that you have a backup of that original file! And if it’s super important and irreplaceable you should keep at least one backup in another location. Beyond that, you can decide how important it is to backup your Audacity projects, “working files” or final-files.
Similarly, if you are recording an important event where there’s no possibility of “take two” it’s a good idea to have two systems recording in parallel. And, a solid-state audio recorder is usually more reliable than a computer.
When I exported the project I remember seeing a screen for putting a title and some other info but I was in a hurry and skipped it. I don’t remember seeing a screen like the one shown in your post. I think that I downloaded my Audacity from the correct address but I can’t be sure.
I guess I will put this one down to experience and since I have no other projects going, I will uninstall Audacity and start again.
Next time I will make a copy of each project as a back-up.
Thanks for all your help and I hear what you are saying about WAV files being a good option.
Fortunately my subject has agreed to be re-interviewed.
Cheers.