I just bought a new computer and have transferred my projects by copying the Cakewalk Projects folder to the new computer. I copied the folder to an external HDD and then connected that HDD to the new computer and pasted.
 
Here's the problem. On several songs so far (I'm guessing more are to come) when I open the project I get a dialog asking me to find a missing audio file. The file is right there in the list of files being presented - at least I thought so until I noticed that the song being looked for has a leading space and the file on the computer does not have the leading space. If I click on the file without the leading space and click OK for each file presented, the project loads and works correctly.
 
So... how can this happen with an, assumedly, perfect copy of the Cakewalk Project folder and maybe more importantly, is there an easy fix that anyone knows of since it is tedious to say the least to have to reassign 20 or more audio files when it happens.
 
Thanks in advance for any enlightenment,
 
Kamm

Hmmm, that "leading space" seems rather odd... If that is the consistent issue, a "bulk renaming utility" might be the easiest solution, but the "catch" with such would be you would actually need to re-fix the ones you have already fixed by manually finding them again after renaming. You could test the renaming utility first on a single project folder you have not opened yet, then do the rest if it works.
 
I have never seen that leading space before, so sort of curious if it is a space, or a special character that renders as a space. Bigger question is what caused it (some audio batch converters allow prefixes to be added to the files, so maybe a space was added in such a function previously?).

That's a weird one. It would appear that somehow during the file copy process something deemed those leading blanks extraneous and dropped them. Programs routinely trim leading and trailing blanks from pathnames, as they are normally mistakes, e.g. a full path was parsed that had more than one delineating blank between tokens, and inadvertently left behind an extraneous blank.
 
I'm guessing that if you went back to the old computer and examined the filenames, that they do have those leading blanks. Why they had those leading blanks in the first place is another mystery entirely.
 
But weird or not, they need to be there in order to match the expectations of the cwp. I'd try to determine where in the transfer process they got dropped. After verifying that they are present on the old computer, check your external drive and see if they are still there at that intermediate stage. 
 
I assume you simply dragged the folders via Windows File Explorer (as opposed to a backup/restore utility). You could try re-copying the project folders outside of Explorer. I almost always use a DOS window when copying files for backups, using the XCOPY command. 

mettelus
a "bulk renaming utility" might be the easiest solution

 
The leading space is, apparently, in the Cakewalk project file. I just tried adding a leading space to a file on my computer and it won't let me add it. It removes the leading space automatically.
 
You're certainly right that it could be a character other than a space but the question still remains: "How did it get there?" This is odd beyond belief but it has happened on two projects that I've opened so far.
 
I'm not at my music computer at the moment, but if this happens again, I'll open the cakewalk project file in a text editor. If it is a text file, I might be able to fix the problem there.
 
Thanks for the idea. It was definitely a good one but seems implausible at the moment.

bitflipper
That's a weird one. It would appear that somehow during the file copy process something deemed those leading blanks extraneous and dropped them.

Hmmm. Seems that mettelus may have the right idea with a bulk renamer. Perhaps even though Windows will remove the leading space when naming a file it may be possible to add the leading space programmatically. I could even write my own VB program to do that.
 
I'll go back and look at my old computer to see if the leading space is there. If it is, I'm at least know what's happened and that may lead me to a solution and perhaps XCOPY will do the trick and maybe bulk renaming will work if that doesn't.

bitflipper
That's a weird one. It would appear that somehow during the file copy process something deemed those leading blanks extraneous and dropped them.

Yep. That's what happened. I just looked at the original Audio folder of one of the songs that had the problem and it had leading spaces for some of the Audio files.
 
I also did a quick test of XCOPY for copying just that one song to the external HDD and the space was retained.
 
I'm now doing an XCOPY of the entire Cakewalk Projects folder and I suspect the problem will be solved.
 
For the Cakewalk Team:
 
I'm certain this happened because I deleted a leading word or two of a track name and failed to remove the trailing space for whatever word(s) I removed. That's my fault but it would be nice if you could make Cakewalk remove the space automatically to protect the user from themselves. :-)  UPDATE: I looked at the track names of the affected songs and sure enough, there were leading spaces. At least the source of the problem is now known.
 

Follow-up
 
I copied the Cakewalk Projects folder using this XCOPY command (E: is the external HD):
 
XCOPY "C:\Cakewalk Projects" /e /c /i /g /h /r /k /y "E:\Cakewalk Projects"
 
This kept the leading spaces and fixed a separate problem which was related to AAS Acoustic Strum playing a Gb chord no matter what was in the MIDI track (happened only on one song). Can't say for sure that XCOPY fixed it because I don't know the cause. That problem is gone now, though.
 
I appreciate the help I received on this problem!!!