Moving tracks

Try "Slide"

This may be a given but worth a shot, did you turn off snap to grid? Sometimes i forget its on and when i go move a track it doesnt go where i want lol.

1 - Select all (ctrl + a)
2 - Click & drag in the time ruler the range that you want to export
3 - Export
 
meant to add: it always helps to leave a bar or 2 at the beginning of the song for various reasons so don't feel there's a technical reason for removing "dead bars"

Yes, do what Jonesey said you don't have to worry about dragging clips around.
 
One thing though, when you do your Range Select in the timeline before exporting make sure you drag out the Range Select far enough beyond the edge of the last clip to capture and "tails". Tails are things like reverb effects or MIDI cymbal hits that might extend beyond what you see on screen in the Track View. Best way to make sure you have select far enough past the edge of the last clip is to listen to the end/watch your Master Bus meter. Make a note of exactly what point on the timeline you stap hearing anything and the Master bus meter shows no activity. Then when you do your pre export Range Select extend the selection about a second or so beyond that.
 
However I usually do all that in a new "Master" project. Essentially I export the whole thing (Ctrl A and then just do the export with the proper settings).
 
Then I import the resulting Stereo Wave into a new project in Sonar (or another audio program) and trim off what a don't want and leave enough room at the start and end for a nice in/out time. Then it's just a matter of dragging the ONE stereo clip and butting it up against the 00:00:00 start point and exporting.
 
Of course in that project you can add mastering effects like a final EQ or compression.
 
Lots of people do that directly in the original project these days but I find it is a LOT easier in a second project. Less screwing around and distractions. It's also easier on the computer to use the heavy duty mastering effects in a one track/clip project without a bunch of synths and track effects going on too.
 
Cheers.

@Woodyoflop... Heheh. Yeah, unless you intend on freezing/bouncing every track and disabling all effects/synths in the project once you start adding things like linear phase EQs and multiband compressors you risk overtaxing the system. Doing all that is a hassle anyway and still doesn't deal with CPU load due to a bunch of tracks. If the computer is good then it can totally be done but it's just so much easier and cleaner in a new project. Doing it INSIDE the same project is probably best done on a new track (as in export/bounce the entire mix into a new track then mute everything else and master that one track) but really... might as well just do a proper export.
 
It also prevents the old "Oooh but maybe I'll just tweak this one little thing on this one track and then... ooh maybe I'll this... and that... and and and". lol
 
Once the mix is "done" just put it out of your head. Much easier to do that when looking at a single track/wave. If there is something totally out of whack (enough to make you want to go back to the mix) then open the original project. I like that kind of psychological separation of mix vs. "master".
 
I am by NO means a mastering engineer though and probably don't even qualify as a mix engineer either. I've just been doing this long enough now to know what makes things easier.
 
Cheers.

You can select the tracks you want to export, then go into Edit, and set the starting point and ending point of what you want to export - so with all tracks selected, you could set it to use an initial starting point of From Now, and the ending point to be Through the End.  So, if you set the Now Time Marker to say the third or fourth measure, and told Sonar to set the Export From the Now Time Marker, it would simply not include anything from before the setting of the Now Time Marker, and would then go through and export all the way to the end.
 
You can refer to the documentation on setting those in Export Audio and setting the Range of what will get exported.  It is super simply to do.
 
Hope that helps, 
 
Bob Bone
 

Snap to grid helps alot when your composing instrumentals with all the instruments and drums and stuff, makes it easy to copy and paste how many measures and stuff that you want. Primarily for someone like me who does a lot of hip-hop style beats, the standard is 16 bar verse and 8 bar chorus, so i can easily tell with snap to grid how many i have on each section and move them and keep them within time without having to fine tune.