Dumb question from complete novice

[bigears]

It's the first time I've used any kind of audio software, and I've searched but couldn't find the answer. If anyone knows of a guide to this really basic stuff, I'd be grateful for a pointer to it (and it would be the easiest way to answer!).

Basically the question is; does it matter what location(s) Audacity files are in? (in ver. 1.2.6, with Vista Home Premium SP2)

I recorded some radio programmes, to listen to later. I simply saved them as Audacity project files, to the Desktop. I'd like to get them off the Desktop, and in a more organised form.
Can I put them wherever I like (my Music folder for instance), or do they go in some folder that's part of Audacity?
Each recording has a .aup file and a data file; I don't know if they need to go in the same folder/all the data files can go in 1 data folder/whatever.
And once I know where the files are going, can I just drag & drop them to the new location (as I can with files associated with my image-editor), or should I save them again from within Audacity?

There's no rush to edit or convert the files (I'll learn about that later, as I go along); at the moment I just want to have some organisation in place, before they start multiplying!

[steve]

ver. 1.2.6, with Vista Home Premium SP2

The recommended version of Audacity for Vista is Audacity 1.3.13.
Audacity 1.2. is too old and has known problems on modern operating systems.
http://audacityteam.org/download/

Each recording has a .aup file and a data file; I don't know if they need to go in the same folder/all the data files can go in 1 data folder/whatever.

The .AUP file and the _data folder MUST be in the same folder as each other.
See here for more (important) information about Audacity Projects: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Audacity_Projects
Audacity Projects may be moved, providing that the AUP file and the _data folder stay together AND there are no "dependencies" (see link above).

There's no rush to edit or convert the files

I would highly recommend that you do the editing and Export an ordinary audio file (WAV file) as you go along. It is alarmingly easy to destroy an Audacity Project - just renaming the _data folder will make the project unreadable. If you want to save the raw recording for editing later, export the recording as an audio file in an uncompressed format such as WAV. This will be smaller than the Audacity Project and a lot more robust. If you want perfect quality audio, Export as "32-bit (float) WAV". For a file that still has excellent quality but half the size, Export as 16-bit WAV (CD Quality and certainly good enough for a recorded radio program).

[bigears]

Many thanks for taking the trouble to set down all that that info, Steve.
I've only had a brief look at it so far, but you seem to have answered my question, anticipated the next things I'll want to know, and answered those too! I'm looking forward to putting it all into practice this weekend.
Apologies for my absence - thought I'd enabled email notification of postings, but I hadn't.