Selecting Audio - the basics

Peter 09May17: Current page title is a "working title" subject to change.

This is a landing page for the proposed Help button in the error message that the user gets if they try to apply an action that requires a selection with no selection extant. Just the bare minimum here, as users landing here want to get on with applying an effect. They can come back for more, once past that roadblock.

Therefore please do not extend this Page.

• Gale: 09May17: Should this be part of Getting Started? If not perhaps Edit should link here? And no, per Audacity Selection, selecting or autoselecting the entire project is as important to know as selecting a range (as you say later in the Intro, but contradict at the start). Your second sentence doesn't want "a range" in it, IMO.
  • Peter 10May17: actully James and I have been discussing whether this page should just be a semi-orphan as a landing page for the proposed Help button for "no selection present" - or whether it would be better as the initial link from the front page entry in Using Audacity>Editing with Audacity. We find ourselves favouring the latter as the full page is more than a bit intimidating tending to TL;DR.

    But you raise a good point here Gale. It certainly would make a better newbie "getting started" page linked to from Edit which is part the "getting started" suite of pages. The question remains: do we also want a separate link to this page from Getting Started - and I don't see why not.

This page shows just the basics of how to select audio to operate on.

Most Audacity operations involve selecting a range of audio in one or more tracks, then deleting or moving the selection or applying an effect to it which changes its sound.

Typical use of Audacity only requires that you know two ways of selecting audio: selecting the entire project or selecting a region.

For further details and visual examples please see the Selecting Audio page.

Selecting the entire project

You can select the entire length of all tracks on screen with Select > All or use the shortcut CTRL + A (or CMND + A on a Mac).

See also: Automatic Select All, if none selected

Selecting a region using the mouse

The easiest way to select a region of audio is to click and drag the cursor using the mouse.

If Selection tool is not selected (default setting), choose from Tools Toolbar, below:

Then click the left mouse button anywhere inside of an audio track, and click and drag to the other edge of your selection, and release.

Automatic Select All, if none selected

There is a setting in Tracks Preferences called "Select all then act on entire project, if no audio selected" that enables Audacity to automatically select the entire project if you have made no explicit time selection.

If this preference is unchecked, all menu items and buttons requiring an audio selection will remain grayed out until audio is selected.

James 10May17:The above sentence will need to change. I'm expecting that we will have a choice of three options for 'Handling of effects when no audio selected:' (1) Grey out (2) Select automatically (3) Warn/Explain. 3 would be the default as being most suitable for newbies. 2 I think is not necessary, but I hear the argument that we should have it. 1 is probably what I would use myself. Am open to better designs and clearer shorter wording.

This page is only a brief summary of how to make selections in your project; for further details and graphical examples please see the Selecting Audio page.