This is really bugging me. I’m not good at understanding technical language or anything so I’ll explain as best I can. So I made an audacity file/project. The only way I could open it was by going into Audacity and clicking on recent files. But now, since I have made more projects, and listened to them, I can’t open my older Audacity files. When I click on it in my downloads, it just comes up with the folder, and then all the names of the files like e000091, e0000b9e, etc etc. And when I try to click on one, it comes up with a little audio window, and displays the following message: Windows Media Player cannot play the file. The Player might not support the file type or might not support the codec that was used to compress the file. But I want to listen to the whole file in Audacity, not one of the things in WMP. And I know they’re not deleted, because I managed to open an older project in audacity fine by clicking on the recent files thing, but when I open it in downloads, it just appears the same as the others, with the folder, and then you open it and there’s loads of random numbers and letters as files. That I can’t open. Only like two of my projects appear in downloads as a folder with the Audacity symbol on it, and I can open those just fine. I didn’t change any of my previous projects at all, I just made new projects and now I can’t access the old ones for some reason. What happened? How do I fix this problem? I’m sorry I’m not very good at explaining, but I’m not very tech savvy and just want to get them back so can listen to them. Thanks!
If it helps I am running a Windows 8 or 8.1 I don’t know exactly it’s definitely one of those two. And I’m on a HP laptop.
Where text below is in blue, click it to read more.
See Find out which version of Windows 8 you are running.
Open the AUP file you saved, not the small files that look like e000091.
If the project you want is no longer in Recent Files, use File > Open… top left of Audacity. In the window that appears, click in “Look in:” at the top and choose where you want to look. Then in the “Files of type:” box at the bottom, choose “Audacity projects”. Anything that is not a folder will then be an AUP project file.
Also this is much less confusing if you make Windows show file extensions, so that you see .aup after the file name of Audacity Projects. To do that, see How to Show File Extensions in Windows.
Note that Windows Media Player will not play AUP project files any more than it will play those small “e” files. To hear your work in Windows Media Player, use File > Export Audio and choose WAV (Microsoft) signed 16-bit PCM.
Gale
Thanks for your quick reply! Although I tried that, but when I clicked open, it said “no items match your search.” 
what am I doing wrong? 
Oh, my bad 
Thanks for replying! It worked now 
Can’t thank you enough, you are a great help