Ableton Forum

DAWs attract young/tech-savvy people, so please have patience with an old boomer, who is brand-new to Ableton/DAW's, when I ask for help with file management. I was making good progress with the inbuilt tutorials on live 12. But when I needed to come back to an unfinished lesson from the previous day, at first I could not find it. Then I found it in a stupid place (downloads?). So I searched for where everything Ableton-related was saved and it was such a mess, including duplicate files within project files (!) and I've only just got started. Ableton must have chosen these locations for Live Sessions/'projects', temp files, back-ups, plug ins, etc., since I had not knowingly chosen them. I want to tidy it all up, so that files save by default to the right place, so I can find things easily, and so that I don't have all these duplicate files and locations, files-within-files, etc.
My desktop computer has an SDD drive running the operating system (windows 11) and a 2nd large hard drive specially for backing up big files, music, videos, pictures, etc. Any advice gratefully received.
I had a useful screenshot of my current folders path to show the mess that has created itself, in the hope someone could enlighten me on what to keep, what to delete and what to move, but I can't find out how to post an image. If I click on the 'insert image' tab on this website it doesn't let me browse my pc for the image, it just inserts this: [{img][/img}]. Again, this may just be me. I'll get better at this stuff, but I'm new to it.
Thanks, Si

Hi Simon,

I too am old boomer but my day job for decades was IT. I think the best way for me to help you is for you to DM me here and we can schedule a time when we can do a google meeting, you can share your screen. I think we can get things sorted out pretty quickly.

dsu

Hi dsu,
Just saw your message and thanks for getting back to me.
I am free now for a several hours, and then I have to travel. Back Sunday night, UK time (for the big soccer match, if that means anything to you?) - so, if not now, then Monday, Tues, Wed... whatever works for you. Let me know where you are so I can calculate time difference.
Would love some help thanks and happy to share my screen, or whatever works best.
Let me know when, how you want to do this? Happy to give you my contact details if needed.
Regards, Simon

Hi dsu. I just saw you invited me to DM you. I have tried using 'private message' button, but it's stuck in my 'outbox'. Not sure I have added recipient details correctly.

Simon, I got your DM and replied last night. I was off grid for a couple of days but back in the city now.