CANT open AUP files which work under Windows

[Jakey]

I just migrated from Windows to Mac and have my Audacity files on an external hardrive.

They open fine on a Windows 7 Laptop but not on my Macbook Pro. Do you have any suggestions?

Thank you!

[Jakey]

THe exact error Code is:

"Error opening file
Could not open file: "

I was wondering could it have by any chance to do with the name of the files?

It let me open one File but not the others?

[billw58]

How did you create the original projects on the Windows laptop? Did you import any WAV files into the projects? If so, what was the setting in Preferences, the File Formats tab, then under "When importing uncompressed audio files into Audacity"? Was it "Make a copy..." or "Read directly..."? Do you still have the Windows laptop to check this?

If it was "Read directly..." and you imported WAV (or other uncompressed files) into the projects, Audacity did not actually copy them into the project, but instead set up a reference to the original files.

Before I go any further I need the answers to those questions. If the projects on the Windows laptop depended on external files, we've got some work to do.

-- Bill

[bgravato]

You posted in the 1.2.x section of the forum... Are you really using such version? If so you should strongly consider upgrading to 1.3.12 (it's the recommended version for both Windows 7 and MacOS-X).
You can get it from here: http://audacityteam.org/download/

If you use non-ascii characters in the file name that can get you into trouble too.

If the external disk filesystem is NTFS, there might be some permission issues... are you able to copy the files into your intenal harddisk on the mac?

[kozikowski]

Do you have any suggestions?

Yes. Stop using Audacity Projects if you don't need them. Export the work as Microsoft WAV files which will open on all three computer types. You only need Projects if you're going to do further editing or have a multi-track show. Audacity Projects are brittle (as you're finding) and make terrible archives.

As above, you should avoid "illegal" characters in filenames. Only use upper and lower case letters, numbers, underscore and dash. The corporate I has to send files all over earth on three different computer types, so I use only legal characters and don't use spaces in the filenames.

A classic problem is dates. 20101231. That's today's date (so far), not 12/31/10.

Koz