Problem selecting several tracks

  • Audacity 3.1.3
  • Windows 11 Home

Hello, I write in search for help with an issue regarding track selection. If I have several tracks and I want to select only some of them, let’s say for example 2 tracks, I select the first one and then go to the other track and press “Ctrl” while selecting it; the problem is that, if the second track is longer than the first one, the selection only covers the part of the second track that equals the length of the first track, but the rest of the second track remains unselected. So for example if I want to duplicate the tracks, Audacity duplicates the first whole track and the part of the second track that was selected, but not the whole second track. How can I solve it? I attach a picture

Recorte Audacity.jpg

How can I solve it?

Start with the longest track?

There is a legacy trick to this. Create a silent track (Generate > Silence) that’s longer than all the others. When you group tracks, always make that one first.

Being silent, it will not contribute or damage any of the other tracks and it will always be longer than everything else guaranteeing nobody gets left behind.

Koz

Have you tried pressing the END key ?

Home key => Cursor to start of project
End key => Cursor to end of project
Shift + Home => Select to start of project
Shift + End => Select to end of project

Hello Koz, Jademan and Steve,thank you very much for your answers. I’ve tried the key combination Steve recommends and it worked perfectly. This way of selecting several tracks, is the normal way to do it? Or may have I disconfigured something unadvertedly, regarding track selection?

Making selections is very flexible. Some methods are better in some cases, while other methods are better in other cases.

I normally make selections with Click and Drag, but with some exceptions:

Selecting all of an audio clip:
Double click on the clip.
(New method in Audacity 3.x: Single click on the drag bar at the top of the clip)

Select from start to end of a single track:
Click on the track’s “Select” button.

Select multiple tracks:

  1. Click on the first track that I want to select
  2. “Down arrow key” to the next track that I want, then “Enter”
  3. Repeat step 2 as necessary
  4. “Shift + J”, “Shift + K”

Select All:
“Ctrl + A”


Some other handy shortcuts:
“J” key => Cursor to start of track
“K” key => Cursor to end of track
Shift + “J” => Select to start of track
Shift + “K” => Select to end of track

Hello Steve, ok.Thank you very much for the info, very useful