editing a siminar when cursor turns into a magnifying glass

[jellyfishjuice]

Audacity 2.2.2 Windows 10
editing a siminar when cursor turns into a magnifying glass wherein waveform can be expanded or deminished all thats nice and dandy but its not what i'm doing and I can't get out of it. this happened 2 nights in a row. when this happened playback of the aup was over with - editing was overwith -the onlything that I could do was explode or shrink waveform - escape would not resolve it. the first time it crashed and I lost the file I was working on second time I was able to save the file I was working on but had to ditch all my hard work I had put into it. so far it has done this only after I have been working on the files for 45 to 50 minutes into the speech wherein a lot of editing had taken place removing pause between speech and correcting stuttering coughs "uhhs" etc. help

[steve]

cursor turns into a magnifying glass wherein waveform can be expanded or deminished

You may have accidentally pressed the F4 key, or clicked on the zoom tool button. Press the F1 key to get back to the normal cursor.
(See: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/zoom_tool.html)