How to get help - Audacity Development Manual

# How to get help

From Audacity Development Manual

Many of our users are not only new to Audacity, but new to recording or editing audio. Others may be more experienced, but just hit a snag.

Don't worry. Here's how to get help.

## Frequently Asked Questions - FAQ

Most common questions are answered in the Frequently Asked Questions and this should be the first place where you search for an answer to your problem.

## Audacity Wiki

A Wiki is a particular type of website, like this one, where people can collaborate to create and modify pages to keep them up-to-date and useful.

The Audacity Wiki is a website where we keep our latest Tips, tricks and extra Tutorials about Audacity and digital audio. After this Manual it's another place to search for your answer.

You do not need an account to use Audacity Wiki, unless you want to edit the pages to make them better. All useful edits are welcomed! To apply for a Wiki account please write to our feedback address stating your reasons for requesting an account.

## Audacity Forum

Still got a question? Then the Audacity Forum is a great place to ask! A Forum member will have the answer, or will point you to where you can find it.

### Searching the Forum

Many questions have been asked before, and you can obtain your answer just by searching! Look for the Search box top right of any Forum page, and enter some general words that relate to your question, separated by spaces. For example if you are recording from a USB turntable and cannot hear the records in Audacity, try entering:

    USB  turntable  hear  records

### How to join

If you need to ask your question on the Forum, there is a quick and easy registration process.

- Go to the Forum Registration page.
- Agree to the Terms of Service, then enter the required information.
- Within minutes you will receive an account activation email. This is only so as to stop others signing you up when you do not want to. Click the link in this email to complete your registration, then you will be able to log in to the Forum and post your first question.

Sometimes it may appear that you do not receive the activation email. Don't panic!

- Go to the login page, and click "Resend activation e-mail".
- You may need to search your Trash or Spam folders for the activation email. The email comes from Buanzo_at_audacityteam.org. If your email client has a whitelist system, you may need to add that address to your whitelist.
- Email Buanzo at that address in the case of any difficulties with registration.

### Asking your question

Please post your question to the particular Forum that corresponds to your computer operating system and version of Audacity (for example, Audacity 2.x for Windows). This makes it much easier for us to help you. Click the "New Topic" button top left, then submit your question.

By default you will be subscribed to the topic you created and will receive an email when someone replies to you. You will not normally receive any other emails from the Forum unless you post to other topics. You can check the topics you posted to at any time by clicking "View your posts" near the top of any Forum page.

## Audacity-users mailing list

This is another place where Audacity users can get together, learn about our application, share tips and ask questions. The difference here is that this a mailing list, meaning you usually send messages to the list by email using your email application. You will also receive an email every time any other list member makes a post. Sometimes there can be a lot of emails if an interesting topic is started! To reduce the number of emails, you can always subscribe in "digest" mode, which combines each day's messages into one large email.

If you only want to ask a question every now and then, the Forum may suit you better.

### How to subscribe

Go to the list information page. Fill out the subscription information half way down the page. You will be sent an email requesting confirmation. This is only so as to stop others signing you up when you do not want to. Click the confirmation link in the email to subscribe and start receiving emails.

Note: This is a public mailing list - messages are seen by all list subscribers, and posted on several websites where the messages are archived.

### Searching for an answer

You can sometimes find an answer quickly by going to the Nabble archive of the list and finding a similar topic to yours. Type in some words in the search box at the right like "No sound USB microphone". Providing you are subscribed to this list and have a Nabble account, you can also post messages to the list from Nabble, using your browser.

### Asking your question

This list is essentially one large collection of individual messages. Each message on this same topic is a "thread", which keeps messages on the same subject together. So if you ask questions here, please give us the following information. You'll get your answer much quicker that way.

- Give the subject of your message a descriptive title that summarises your problem - "No sound in iTunes after recording from USB microphone" is great; "Help me!!" is not...
- Tell us what computer operating system you are using (for example, Windows 7 or Mac OS X 10.10.1)
- Tell us exactly what version of Audacity you are using (see Help > About Audacity, or Audacity > About Audacity on a Mac computer)
- If this is a recording problem, tell us what equipment you are recording with, and how it's connected to the computer

### Etiquette

Following these rules helps everyone get the most out of the list, whether searching for an answer or replying to a message:

- To start a new topic: Choose a new subject and Press "Compose" in your email software to start a completely new email. Please do not take someone else's message with its own subject and content and post your own unrelated material into it. If you must compose a new message by replying to someone else's, at least change the subject and remove all the text from the original message. Note that this still means the online archives of this list will keep the old subject, because they store the header references to the old subject. This makes it very difficult to follow messages online, so please try to compose a new message if you can.
- When replying to a message:
  - Don't send a reply which includes a complete copy of the message you are replying to, unless it's really necessary. Retain only those parts of the original message that are relevant to your answer. Otherwise the message becomes too long by the time several people have replied.
  - If you are replying to a digest email, change the subject to that of the individual message from the digest that you are replying to.

### How to unsubscribe or change your options

- Towards the bottom of the list information page, look for the "Audacity-users Subscribers" section. At the bottom of that section, you'll find "To unsubscribe from Audacity-users, get a password reminder, or change your subscription options enter your subscription email address:". Enter your email address and click the "Unsubscribe or edit options" button.
- On the page that follows, look for "Unsubscribing from Audacity-users" a little way down the page. If you really want to leave the list, click "Unsubscribe".