Audacity Forum

Apple QuickTime is a free download. See if the file opens up in that. If it does, you can purchase Quicktime Pro and that should allow you to edit your file.

$30 USD.

Koz

It's an MP3 file. It plays on my MP3 player in my car if I burn it as a data CD... Windows also tells me it's an MP3 file...

"MP3Split" http://mp3splt.sourceforge.net/mp3splt_page/home.php can handle MP3 files up to the limit that your operating system can handle (probably 2 or 4 GB on an XP machine).
Note that it only works with MP3 files.

Recently we had a user that swore his file was an MP3 - it was even called "something-or-other.MP3", but it turned out that the file was NOT an MP3.

If you right click on the file and select "properties > Advanced", Windows should tell you the file format, the number of channels and the bit rate.

<<<If you right click on the file and select "properties > Advanced", Windows should tell you the file format, the number of channels and the bit rate.>>>

You totally can't go by the Windows icons or other information. Windows wants everything to be Windows Media and sometimes tries to force it.

If, as you claim, several different MP3 editors can't open the file and Audacity won't touch it, then it may not be a real MP3 file.

Koz

There is a very slick free utility called GSpot. http://www.headbands.com/gspot/ It's Windows only, unfortunately.
It will tell you more than you ever want to know about hundreds and hundreds of different audio and video codecs. I've used it several times to solve problems similar to the one in this thread.

Addendum to my post above this one: You tell GSpot the name of a media file, and it tells you which codec it uses and what all the settings are for that file.

SUPER by erightsoft can also give a full analysis of media files. SUPER is a free program for Windows.
To get the media information, drag the file onto the SUPER interface, then double click on the file name in the SUPER window.
(SUPER is also able to convert almost any media file format to almost any other).

For Linux, there is a program called MediaInfo http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en which can give a comprehensive format analysis (MediaInfo is used in SUPER).
This is only really required if you want to know the finer details of a media file as Linux will provide most of the information by simply right clicking on the file and selecting "Properties > Audio".