Error: not well-formed (invalid token) at line x
- The project contains imported files whose metadata (like artist or genre) contains control characters. This mostly occurs with Apple Music/iTunes files on Mac where the project was created in an older version of Audacity.
- The project was saved containing non-English or accented characters using an old ANSI build of Audacity for Windows. ANSI builds are not properly Unicode aware, so do not support non-English or accented characters.
- The latest version of Audacity will always fully support Unicode. You can check your Audacity version at (or on Mac).
Solution for error caused by control characters
- Make a copy of the AUP project file and open it in a text editor. You can use the default Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on Mac, but in a few instances these could change the AUP file in such a way that Audacity could no longer open it. We recommend instead Notepad++ for Windows and Brackets or BBEdit for Mac.
- Turn word wrap off in the menus (or in TextEdit, drag the window horizontally so that lines do not wrap).
- In the line indicated in the error message, look for one of these:
- projname=
- name=
- value=
- title=
then remove all characters inside the quotation marks that follow which are not a number or an A to Z letter. You could also change those characters to a number or A to Z letter. For example, a string of control characters you would want to remove or change might start with &# followed by four numbers and a semi-colon, such as &# 0 0 1 3 ;.
- Save the changes to the .aup file.
- If you re-open the project and an error occurs at another line, repeat the steps above in the new line indicated in the error message.
<tag name="GENRE" value="Drama &# 0 0 0 9 Comedy"/>
And the same line corrected so that the two words can be read into the project:
<tag name="GENRE" value="Drama, Comedy"/>
"Drama 0009 Comedy", though meaningless, would also enable the project to be opened correctly.![]() |
If you had to rename "projname" in the AUP file, rename both the AUP project file and the corresponding _data folder so that they have the same name as "projname" in the AUP file. |
Solution to correct an AUP file created in an ANSI version of Audacity, preserving non-English characters
- Make a copy of the file
- Open the file in Notepad++ (a free text editor that supports UTF-8 encoding of Unicode characters)
- Choose
- Save the changes to the file.
Solution to remove redundant lines in an AUTOSAVE recovery file or AUP file
- Find the autosave file. It will be in an "AutoSave" folder in Audacity\'s folder for application data as follows:
- Windows: Users\\<username>\\AppData\\Roaming\\Audacity\\
- OS X/macOS ~/Library/Application Support/audacity/
- Linux: ~/.audacity-data/ .
- Make a copy of the AUTOSAVE file as a backup and move the copy somewhere else such as your Desktop.
- If the AUTOSAVE file was created by Audacity 2.1.1 or later, it must be converted to XML format before it can be edited in a text editor. Follow the steps to convert the AUTOSAVE file to XML then return to step 4 below.
- Open the AUTOSAVE file in a text editor like Notepad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac).
- Turn word wrap off in the menus (or in TextEdit, drag the window horizontally so that lines do not wrap).
- Go to the line indicated in the error message. If you had been recording, the last line above it will probably look like </recordingrecovery>.
- We need to delete the entire line. It may be a long line containing only empty spaces or it may have </project> at the end of all the spaces. Hold Shift and press Down to select the entire line before pressing Delete. Ensure this leaves you with a final line that contains only </project>. Ensure this is the only line that contains </project>.
- Save the changes to the file.
Converting the AUTOSAVE file to XML
Windows
- In the AutoSave folder, right-click the AUTOSAVE file and choose "Cut".
- Go to the folder Audacity is installed in, such as "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Audacity", then right-click in empty space and choose "Paste". Provide the administrator password if asked.
- Open an administrator command prompt. See instructions for Windows 8 or Windows 10.
- Assuming the prompt in the command window shows some location in C:\\ and Audacity is installed in some location in C:\\, type "cd" (without quotes) then a space. If Audacity is on some other drive than the prompt indicates, type the name of that drive letter and a colon (such as D:), press Enter, and then type "cd" (without quotes) then a space.
- Go up one level in Explorer then drag the icon for the Audacity installation folder into the command window. The path "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Audacity" (or whatever it is) will appear. Press Enter to change the prompt to the path you dragged in.
- At the end of the path, type "audacity" (without quotes), a space, then "/d" (also without quotes), another space, then drag the AUTOSAVE file into the command window. Here is what an example should look like:
C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Audacity> audacity /d "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Audacity\\My Project - 2015-07-01 14-12-35 N-2.autosave" - Press Enter. You can see in Explorer that the AUTOSAVE file has been updated.
- Now you can cut the AUTOSAVE file from the Audacity installation folder, and paste it into the AutoSave folder. Now you can make corrections to the file in a text editor.
Mac OS X/macOS:
- In the AutoSave folder, right-click or Control-click the AUTOSAVE file and choose the option to Copy.
- Go to the folder Audacity.app is installed in, such as /Applications/Audacity, hold ⌘ and Option then press V to move the AUTOSAVE file alongside Audacity.
- Right-click over Audacity.app then choose "Show Package Contents".
- Open the "Contents" folder then the "Mac OS" folder.
- Open a Terminal then drag the Audacity file in the "Mac OS" folder into the terminal to display the path to that Audacity file.
- Then at the end of the file path, type a space, "-d" (without quotes) and another space then drag the AUTOSAVE file into the Terminal.
- Press Enter to convert the file. You will see a message that the file has been decoded successfully.
- In the "Mac OS" folder, right-click or Control-click the AUTOSAVe file and choose the option to Copy.
- Go to the "AutoSave" folder, hold ⌘ and Option then press V to move the converted AUTOSAVE file back into the AutoSave folder. Now you can make corrections to the file in a text editor.
GNU/Linux:
- Open a terminal.
- Assuming Audacity is installed, type "audacity -d" (without quotes) then a space, then type the path to the AUTOSAVE file (or drag the AUTOSAVE file into the terminal). Here is an example:
audacity -d "home/al/.audacity-data/AutoSave/My Project - 2015-07-01 14-12-35 N-2.autosave" - Press Enter to convert the file. You will see a message that the file has been decoded successfully. Now you can make corrections to the file in a text editor.
- Ask for help on the Audacity Forum and attach the AUP or autosave file.
- Try to recover the project manually, if it is an unedited recording.
Problem still there? It probably means there is a specific problem with the syntax of the tags in the AUP file. Copy the AUP file to another location, then open the file in Notepad++ for Windows and Brackets or BBEdit for Mac and examine if the tags of the file enclosed in angle brackets < > are consistently open and closed and are complete.