My use case...
I have a single project with 3 hours of music... 16 tracks... I recorded last night. I want to split it into smaller projects as I go so I can always return to the identical settings song after song.
 
I want to only copy the audio required for the song when I move the clips to the new project to keep the project size manageable.
 
My Steps...
1. Mark the beginning and ending of the song with markers.
2. Split all tracks at the both markers
3. Select all between the markers and choose Clips > Bounce to Clips
4. Select all between the markers
5. Paste into my new project
 
Expected results...
That I just copy over the audio in the tracks for the selected range
 
Actual results...
The audio folder has 2 wave files for each track. 1 is for the original recording and the other is for the clip (smaller size).
 
Next step...
If I simply sort the audio in the audio folder and delete the larger files, then re-open the project, I get a warning that files are missing that will be replaced with silence, but there's nothing missing so far as I can tell after the project opens.
 
...
 
The question...
What is the right way to do this?

Ok... the just deleting files has backfired. I get the warning every time I open the project.
 
So, I tried to go save the project as a bundle, but that failed me too. It's telling me to clean up events with missing audio, but I have no idea how to do that.

I can find events in the event view for the tracks, but if I delete them, the audio I want also gets deleted.

I'm now trying the Clean Up Audio function that takes forever.

The clean up audio function didn't fix things for me. The project is still corrupted and I can't save it as a bundle.
Hmmm.
 
Oh well.

The method seems OK, at least it worked for me. After following the method described, the original project contained both bounced and original waves and the new project contained bounced clips only. I would suggest working with a much smaller project to get comfortable with the process.

If the original project is corrupted. Create a new project and drag in the original clips.

Maybe there's a setting or something that enables you to copy the track with the UNDO for the track or something. I'm not sure.
 
I wonder if I make the clips, then close and re-open the project if I could copy just the clips.
 
I'll try it.

Yes! Closing the project after creating the clips enables me to copy only the clip, not the before and after clips.
 

I never left SONAR during my test. There are other ways to do this, like export/import the selected track areas.