Audacity Forum

I recorded to audacity from mixer. I edited the recording and saved to my folder. I deleted the .bak file. When I tried to open the edited file I got this message: "Couldn't find the project data file." I opened the data folder for this and it seems to be ok.
(1) what caused this and (2) Can I retreive the file?

<<<When I tried to open the edited file >>>

That's the problem right there. Audacity doesn't save sound files. It saves Editing Production Environments (Projects) sometimes consisting of thousands of files--and few of them are sound files. It's easy to kill off parts of your project by accident. "I cleaned up all those messy files and folders and now my show has patches of silence where the flutes used to be."

Next time you capture a performance, Export As WAV and that will give you one single sound file that you can easily move around and back up to a second drive. Then edit your brains out. Export a finished WAV and/or an MP3 for your iPod.

You only need Projects if you're going to produce a multi-track, fully orchestrated, major motion picture. I haven't done that since at least Tuesday.

Koz

Thanks for the explanation. Great help and I'll follow your advice and export to .wav before I do any editing.

bn

Additional question on lost file. In reference to your answer: Once I have recorded to audacity>export to wav (w/o any editing). Should I then right click on WAV file>open with with Audacity>edit, then save to new wav, or should I open the original audacity project, edit, save again as wav?