File Menu

New

Creates a new empty project window.

Open...

Selecting Open presents you with a dialog where you can choose a file to open. If the current project window is "empty", in fact you have an empty project in front of you, which will be used to load the file you choose. If the project already has data in it, then the file you open will be loaded in a new project in a new window.

The file formats recognized by Audacity include WAV, AIFF, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, MIDI, and the Audacity Project file format (AUP).

Import...

Similar to Open, except that the audio file is added as a new track to your existing audio file. This lets you open two files and mix them. You can also use this command to import labels (see Label Tracks).

Import Raw Data...

Import an uncompressed audio file that is partially corrupted or in a format that Audacity doesn't recognize.

Close

Closes the current project window, prompting you to save your work if you haven't saved.

Save Project

Saves the current Audacity project (AUP) file. Audacity projects are not intended to be read by other programs, but they are fast to load and save within Audacity. When you are finished working on a project and you want to be able to use it in another program, select one of the Export commands instead (see below).

Note that most of the audio data for an Audacity project is not stored in the AUP file, but in a directory (folder) with the same name as the project. For example, if you save a project as chanson.aup, there will be a directory called chanson_data created to store the actual audio tracks of the project. For more information on the project file format, see the file formats page.

Save Project As...

Saves the current Audacity project (AUP) file, allowing you to give it a different name or move it to a new location if you have already saved it in one location. Audacity projects are not intended to be read by other programs, but they are fast to load and save within Audacity. When you are finished working on a project and you want to be able to use it in another program, select one of the Export commands instead. For more information on the project file format, see the file formats page.

Check Dependencies

An Audacity project depends on all of the audio files you opened or imported until you specifically make a copy of them. You should not delete or move an audio file that Audacity is using in a project. The Check Dependencies command will list all of the audio files that your project depends on, and give you the option of copying them into the project so that it's self-contained. The disadvantage of this is that it takes time to copy and uses up a lot of extra disk space.

Export As...

Exports the current Audacity project as an audio file format that can be read by other programs. If there are multiple tracks in your project, they will be automatically mixed in the exported data. For more information about mixing, see Mix and Render.

To change the formats that appear in this menu and their options, open the File Formats Preferences.

Export Selection As...

This is the same as Export, above, but it only exports the part of the project that is selected. This is very useful if you want to save a small clip from part of a track as a separate file.

Export Labels...

If you have any Label Tracks, this command will export them as a text file. This feature is commonly used in Speech Recognition research to annotate a speech utterance and export the annotation to be later processed by another program. To import these labels into a different project later, use the Import... command, above.

Export Multiple...

This allows you to do multiple exports from Audacity with one command based either on multiple tracks in the project or labels in a single audio track. It's great for splitting up long recordings into CD tracks. See Tutorial - Copying a Cassette or LP to CD for an example of how this is used.

Process Batch...

This command only works if you have a blank Audacity window open. See Batch Processing.

Upload File...

Upload files directly to an FTP server right from within Audacity. Useful after you've created a podcast.

Page Setup...

Opens the standard Page Setup dialog box prior to printing

Print...

Prints the contents of the Audacity window. The time ruler and all of your track waveforms and label tracks are printed, with no decorations. Everything is printed to one page.

Exit

Closes all project windows and exits Audacity. It will ask you if you want to save changes to your project. It is not necessary for you to save changes if you just exported your file as WAV or MP3 and you are finished working with it. On the other hand, if you are working on a mix and plan to continue where you left off, saving an Audacity Project will let you restore everything as it is later.