Audacity Forum

Am just starting to use 1.3.9 after years of 1.2.6. The newer version has a lot to like, but one "feature" is about to drive me back to the old one. Every time I accidentally hit Delete, having nothing selected, all the samples for the entire track I'm working on are deleted! Of course I immediately hit Ctrl-Z, but it's REALLY irritating.

I'm assuming that this behavior occurs because the yellow rectangle around the active track denotes a kind of default "select all." But whatever the case, I need to get rid of this behavior in which Audacity deletes everything if nothing is selected. I've looked in Preferences and briefly in the new manual but didn't see anything that seemed relevant. Does anyone know how alter this behavior?

Thanks!

I bet I know why it's there. One of the top feature requests from Audacity 1.2 was Auto Select All if you applied a filter with no preparation. "Of course I want the filter applied to the whole show. What else could I want?"

Audacity 1.2 would just fail if you didn't Edit > Select > All before each filter application. Actually, I think the whole filter bank was gray leading to billions of postings on the forum. "How come my Effects are gray...?"

Pretty much no other program works like that and it drove the whole community nuts.

I bet this is an offshoot of that.

Let me read this back to you. You want Audacity to stop deleting things when you press the Delete key.

Koz

This is really a 1.3 question not a 1.2 so you have posted in the wrong section

Go to Edit > Preferences > Tracks and uncheck the box that says "Select all audio in project, if none selected"

WC

I moved this to the 1.3 section - and left a shadow behind

Thanks, wax. I did look through Preferences; dunno how I missed that. I guess I was relying more on the manual (there's nothing about this feature on the Selection page).

BTW, this is the 1.3 forum... ;)

Ironword wrote:I guess I was relying more on the manual

It'll be safer to do that when the manual is finished (volunteers to help with the manual are most welcome).

Ironword wrote:BTW, this is the 1.3 forum...

Yes, THIS is. (waxcylinder moved it over from the 1.2.x part of the forum)

stevethefiddle wrote:

Ironword wrote:BTW, this is the 1.3 forum... ;)

Yes, THIS is. (waxcylinder moved it over from the 1.2.x part of the forum) ;)

Oops! Dang, I could've sworn I posted it to the 1.3 forum.