ronanfromavon
Level 1 (0 points)

Q: Can you delete all the duplicates on your Library in one go

My library as too many duplicates and is too hard to manage

iPod classic 160GB (Late 2009)

Posted on Feb 18, 2015 2:48 PM

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ronanfromavon

Q: Can you delete all the duplicates on your Library in one go

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  • by norm123,

    norm123 norm123 Feb 20, 2015 6:11 AM in response to ronanfromavon
    Community Specialists
    Feb 20, 2015 6:11 AM in response to ronanfromavon

    Hello ronanfromavon,

     

    If you have many duplicates on your iPod then the way to clear them up is within iTunes. Check to make sure that you do not have any duplicates in iTunes by following the steps in the article below to isolate and then removing them. Then it is a matter of syncing your iPod with iTunes to clearing out anything that is not supposed to be on there. 

     

    Find and remove duplicate items in your iTunes library

    http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201812

     

    Regards,

    -Norm G. 

  • by turingtest2,

    turingtest2 turingtest2 Feb 20, 2015 8:52 AM in response to ronanfromavon
    Level 10 (85,885 points)
    iTunes
    Feb 20, 2015 8:52 AM in response to ronanfromavon

    Apple's official advice on duplicates is here at the link Norm has posted: Find and remove duplicate items in your iTunes library. It is a manual process and the article fails to explain some of the potential pitfalls such as lost ratings and playlist membership, or that sometimes the same file can be represented by multiple entries in the library and that deleting one and recycling the file will break the other.

     

    Use Shift > View > Show Exact Duplicate Items to display duplicates as this is normally a more useful selection. You need to manually select all but one of each group to remove. Sorting the list by Date Added may make it easier to select the appropriate tracks, however this works best when performed immediately after the dupes have been created.  If you have multiple entries in iTunes connected to the same file on the hard drive then don't send to the recycle bin.

     

    Use my DeDuper script if you're not sure, don't want to do it by hand, or want to preserve ratings, play counts and playlist membership. See this thread for background, this post for detailed instructions, and please take note of the warning to backup your library before deduping.


    (If you don't see the menu bar press ALT to show it temporarily or CTRL+B to keep it displayed.)


     

    The most recent version of the script can tidy dead links as long as there is at least one live duplicate to merge stats and playlist membership to and should cope sensibly when the same file has been added via multiple paths.


     

    tt2