I would highly recommend upgrading to Audacity 1.3.12
http://audacityteam.org/download/
Audacity works in its own format called "Audacity Projects"
An Audacity Project is made up of two parts - the .AUP file, and a whole bunch of data files.
The data files contain the actual audio data, whereas the .AUP file tells Audacity what to do with the data.
When you record in Audacity, the audio data is initially stored in a temporary folder, then written to a data folder when the project is saved. For example if you save an Audacity Project called "myproject" then there will be a file called "myproject.aup" and a folder called "myproject_data".
To edit files that have not been recorded directly in Audacity, you can
Import the files into an Audacity Project.
You need to be a little bit careful here:
For compressed audio files (such as MP3 and OGG), Imported files are copied into the Audacity Project.
Where you need to be careful is that by default, if you import uncompressed audio files (such as WAV files) the Imported files are NOT automatically copied. Audacity can access these files directly and will only copy data if the data is changed. This means that if you import WAV files, some of the data that is used in the project may not exist inside the _data folder and the Audacity Project "depends" on the existence of the (external) WAV files.
Audacity Projects are not compatible with other programs - they only work with Audacity.
To create a standard audio files from an Audacity Project you must
Export the audio file.
An Exported file is a standard audio file and once exported it does not depend on the Audacity Project.
In Audacity 1.3.12, Files can be Imported and Exported from the File menu.
It may be worth having a look at some of the tutorials to become familiar with how Audacity works. (see link at top of page or directly below this post).
