I am BRAND NEW to Sonar, created a project and saved it. It indicates the file is 201KB but when I re-open the project, it appears empty. Suggestions? Remember - brand new so forgive me in advance. My knowledge base is nil.

An empty project should be about 200KB. Maybe a quick run through the tutorials may help http://www.cakewalk.com/D...age=3&help=0x18236

THANK YOU! I have another project that I created that has about 20 minutes of recording that's right at 200 also?  I will look at the tutorials, I greatly appreciate it! I was just hoping to recover the recording of the 'blank' project.

Audio is not stored in the project file. The project file contains pointers to the audio file, information about plug-ins, MIDI data and other project related data. You should be using per-project audio folders stores audio files in a folder immediately below the project file.

AH! Makes sense! Thanks so much!

A CWP file will grow a lot larger when you add midi, virtual instruments and effects to the project.
 

In addition to the included tutorials, and the product documentation, there are also a whole bunch of video clips online at Cakewalk TV and YouTube.  Additionally, there are commercial books and videos available that are REALLY good at explaining given versions of Sonar.
 
Sonar has an evolving user interface that has come a long way since a complete redesign of it in the X1 release, and you can get rudimentary things recorded pretty quickly.  At the same time, Sonar is a pro-level program, with some pretty complex concepts and a lot of things to learn, so if you are a beginner to it all, I HIGHLY recommend you pursue some combination of the tutorials, videos, and books available.  
 
These things will get you up to speed way faster than stumbling your way through it, and will help you create things that are of top-notch quality, and will also reduce your frustration level while you are learning the whole process, as well.
 
 
Bob Bone

But if you had recorded audio to a few tracks and you say it's not there?? 
Even if you don't have a handle on the way Sonar stores stuff, saving a project as a CWP ( Normal) file and then re opening it should work fine. Until you manually move stuff around or change the default pathways Sonar should be able to open your saved projects.
So the question is, did you record audio, save the file, and now there is no audio?? Are you opening the file from the main menu "open" or by double clicking the CWP icon from Windows? 
 
By default Sonar has a bunch of folders set up and you can see this in the preferances. 
Your audio by default would have been stored in the Global Audio folder so you can find it there.