Is there a way to search what projects contain a .wav file that is on disk? Other than opening all my projects and searching each instance of all the pool files. 'You see before I knew how to manage project files, I recorded several (15) projects with guitar licks in different projects and in the same pool file, that by the way was not contained in the sub directory of the projects, as many ignorant users would, eh? So after I go through the (15) and prepare archive and backup each project to new location this will duplicate all the .wav’s and then I will know about those project pool folder and about those .wav’s. And, will have to figure out how to merge some of those tracks. I record several mono tracks for each guitar lick in multi tracks for awsome GTR sound, so each lick is a set of tracks. But there are ALOT more .wav’s in that pool that I don’t know where the projects are. I could just play the .wav’s and then import to new projects if I want them, etc… Can anyone point me to forum topics for best steps to sort out this common “mess” of a problem for newbie Cubase users? I have looked but really the searching of the forums seems a little cludgy, I don’t see that one can search for specific “text strings”, I can see how to use adv search to look for topics containing all words using “+” but when doing that it will not allow the word “project” - - Thanks.
Hi,
I’m afraid this is not possible to search in which projects has been specific file used.
Common new user mistake for sure…
Unless I am misunderstanding your issue.
Open the .cpr and save it using the backup project function using the minimize audio files function.
You will end up with a project with just the audio files associated with it and not the massive audio pool.
Only 14 more projects to go and you have separated your problem projects.
Have fun.
Regards. 
I highly recommend you follow Prock’s advice. It is really worth while to separate projects clearly from each other. With cubase pro you can also create a kind of shared pool in case you need this.
I am all in favor of an approach that makes every project a complete entity not depending on anything “outside” - even though that might cost some more diskspace.
Thanks Prock and Elien - I have discovered better management skills and have been using the Backup Project with success. Still there is the problem of cleaning up the mess of the 15 and I have found some cubase pro 10.5 weirdness resulting from multiple locations in the pool and the truncation of the project folder in the field at top of pool for more than 63 characters and some weird and surprising result running the prepare archive function. I performed some tests by creating projects that had multiple locations in the pool for the wav files and cubase seemed to use the first occurrence of a wav location from the locations of the wav file paths from the pool list of wav files and did not seem to use the project folder from the active project - I decided not to go down that rabbit hole any further to find out that cubase has some quirks when there is not ONE SINGULAR pool location for a projects pool - to just accept that cubase is designed to use ONE SINGULAR pool location for its pool, and go with that. And manually sort through the 1500 files from some pretty good new guitar phrases and riffs. I put all those into one project then prepared pool and backup project, then went through that old pool to remove the list of wav’s that were copied with the backup project comparing and removing from the old pool, there were a bunch of false start takes that were easy to delete for the old pool. Closure.
Glad you apparently got it sorted out.
Just wondering, if I am reading your problem description right, how did you get a project to use files from different audio pools (or what you say as "multiple locations)? Or even make a project using audio files from different audio pools?
I definitely understand how one massive audio pool for many projects can happen but, a project using audio from two (or more) different pools. That’s a new one for me. I would think this is not possible. If I am wrong, please let me know.
Regards
let me see if I can share the notes I made for myself…well I cant really get the image captures in this maybe I can see if I can send to your user, probably very limited how I can share the info in the forum…oh I see a files attachment please look for it.
Testing How Remove Unused Files works
Create projects that have at least 3 audio files in Pool1 and 1 file in a different folder in pool2
To do this just create new project1 in location A, record 3 tracks in pool1 location.
name the tracks as:File1,2,3 – is used in Project1 and is in the Pool1 folder – first condition met.
Then save this project1 to project2 in new location B, record three new tracks in this new pool2 location.
name the tracks as:File4,5,6 – is not used in Project1 is used in Project2 and is in the Pool1 – second condition met.
Then save this project to project3 new location C, record a new track in this new pool3 location.
File6 – is used in Project1 and is in the pool3 folder
File testDataLocation_01nnn – is not used in Project1 or Project2 but is in Pool1 – additional condition met.
For test - when backing up project to diff location and selecting remove unused items test shows if File2 gets removed
Testing How Remove Unused Files works.zip (1.52 MB)
I caution everyone this may cause brain damage - please be careful and don’t think about this too much…lol
AND let me be CLEAR this IS what NOT TO DO!