Q: I moved iTunes library to new computer. Now it duplicates all songs

I do not exactly understand what you mean by the state of the library in the new computer. But I'll answer whatever I understand. In the new computer, when I open iTunes, I see all songs with all ratings, playlists and number of times a track has played just like in the old computer. But the iTunes Media folder is located in C:\Users\<Username>\Music\iTunes. This was also the case in the previous computer though.

When I double click on a track, it does play.

And when I copied the iTunes Media Folder from the previous computer to this one, there were no duplicates created here on the new computer. But when I used "Add Folder to Library" option to add C:\Shaheer42\Music to the library, duplicates started being created. I cancelled the process while it was underway, so every song did not have duplicates, but some of the songs did have duplicates. I deleted all the duplicates, so my library again has no duplicates, but if I do add the folder C:\Shaheer42\Music again to my library, then obviously, I would get duplicates again.

No, look. On my previous computer, I used to use "Add folder to library" to add D:\Shaheer42\Music into the library. At this time, the iTunes Media Folder was C:\Users\<Username>\Music\iTunes. But I had the option Copy files... disabled. The iTunes Media Folder did not itself have any of the songs listed in my library. And all songs in my library were recognized to be located in D:\Shaheer42\Music. The result was that whenever I used "Add Folder to Library" option to add D:\Shaheer42\Music to my library, iTunes recognized all the songs that were already in my library, and did not make two copies of them appear. But any new songs I had added to D:\Shaheer42\Music now started appearing in the library. All this time, the Copy Files... option was disabled so the iTunes Media Folder did not itself contain any of these songs.

Maybe if at this time I tried to copy the iTunes Media Folder to my new computer, then in the library of my new computer, I would probably get those exclamation marks you are talking about, as of course, iTunes would no longer see music files inside D:\Shaheer42\Music.

But then when I wanted to shift my library from my old computer to the new computer, I read a guide by Apple, in which was written that before I start, I should enable the Copy files... option. So I did enable this. iTunes took a long time, and in the status bar, it was written something like "Copying <name of song>". The name of every song in my library appeared, and then it was finished. I then checked the iTunes Media Folder, and it had copies of all my songs. Now if I did use the "Add folder to library" option, and tried to add D:\Shaheer42\Music, then maybe I would actually get duplicates of all songs. I did not however try this. I think at this time, iTunes started recognizing all songs in the library to be located in the iTunes Media Folder, and I also think that even if I deleted D:\Shaheer42\Music, it would make no difference to iTunes' library.

I then copied files D:\Shaheer42\Music from my old computer to C:\Shaheer42 on my new computer. Also, I copied the whole iTunes Media Folder from my previous computer, to C:\Users\<Username>\Music\iTunes in my new computer. I simply opened iTunes, and did not add any single file or folder at this point. All the songs, ratings, playlists etc. from my previous computer were appearing on iTunes. All of these songs were recognized by iTunes to be located in the iTunes Media Folder. Then I tried to use "Add folder to library" to add C:\Shaheer42\Music to my library. This folder had the same songs as were already present in my library, but iTunes did not recognize these to be the same, so it started adding these songs, which made each song seem to appear twice in the library. Actually what was happening was, that one of each song was from iTunes Media Folder, and the other of each song was from C:\Shaheer42\Music.

I think there might be a solution. What do you think that I go and delete the folder C:\Users\<user>\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music. This would probably lead to all files having the exclamation mark with them. And if I would double click any file, suppose "Lean On - DJ Snake/Aluna George", it would give me an option to locate the file or to cancel. I would click "Locate". And in the box that opens in which I have to select the file, I would go and select the file from C:\Shaheer42\Music. Then iTunes would ask me to use the location of this file, to find all other missing files in the library. I would ask iTunes to use the location. And then I think, all files would again become playable, but now iTunes would recognize all files to be located in C:\Shaheer42\Music. In this way, if I added a file to C:\Shaheer42\Music, I would simply go to "Add folder to library", and it would recognize all files that are already in the iTunes library, and would not add those files again, but it would add any new files that are not in the library. This would be just what I wanted. Should I try this? And if I do, I think that I should keep the Copy Files... option disabled, right?

Well the thing is actually that iTunes takes a long time to startup, and I do not always use iTunes to play my music. I often like to play it using Windows Media Player, and to do that, I just open C:\Shaheer42\Music, and double click on each song I want to play from there. It just seems more comfortable to me. I could do this by going into the iTunes Media Folder instead of C:\Shaheer42\Music, but iTunes Media Folder organizes files in a way that gives me a headache.

So I could do the solution I told about above, could I not?

So I could do the solution I told about above, could I not? I mean this solution:

What do you think that I go and delete the folder C:\Users\<user>\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music. This would probably lead to all files having the exclamation mark with them. And if I would double click any file, suppose "Lean On - DJ Snake/Aluna George", it would give me an option to locate the file or to cancel. I would click "Locate". And in the box that opens in which I have to select the file, I would go and select the file from C:\Shaheer42\Music. Then iTunes would ask me to use the location of this file, to find all other missing files in the library. I would ask iTunes to use the location. And then I think, all files would again become playable, but now iTunes would recognize all files to be located in C:\Shaheer42\Music. In this way, if I added a file to C:\Shaheer42\Music, I would simply go to "Add folder to library", and it would recognize all files that are already in the iTunes library, and would not add those files again, but it would add any new files that are not in the library. This would be just what I wanted. Should I try this? And if I do, I think that I should keep the Copy Files... option disabled, right?

About 10% of my songs would have no order in the tags. But the tags of about 90% of my songs are in the manner: "<name> - <artist>" (excluding inverted comma's, and including spaces). In cases where there are multiple artists of one song, then in some of the songs I write <artist 1> ft. <artist 2> or <artist 1> feat. <artist 2> or <artist 1> & <artist 2>. For almost every song that enters the music folder, I do two things. Firstly I go and change the tag to what I told above, and secondly I right-click the song, go to Properties, go to Details, and over there I change two things. Firstly, in the box in front of "Title" I write the song name. The exact song name. Exactly as the "<name>" in the tag. And in front of "Contributing Artists" I write the name of the artist of that song. If there is just one artist, this is simple. But in case there are multiple artists, I sometimes write it as <artist 1> ft. <artist 2> or <artist 1> feat. <artist 2> or <artist 1> & <artist 2>. This appears as it is in iTunes. I mean that if I write <artist 1> ft. <artist 2> over here, it would appear exactly as <artist 1> ft. <artist 2> in iTunes in front of the song name. But mostly I write the name of the first artist, then I double click within the box in the space ahead of what I have typed. This puts an automatically generated semi-colon right next to the first name. Then I type the second artist's name. For more than two artists, I do the same for each artist. In iTunes or any iPhone, these artists appear as <artist 1>/<artist 2>.

But luckily however 70% of my library has songs with one artist or band. So the tag is simply "<name> - <artist>", the title in Properties> Details is simply <title> and the contributing artist is simply <artist>.

If your script could help with these 70% songs in my library, I could relocate the rest manually. But if it can help me with 90%, then that would be awesome!

P.S. I just noticed that if I started relocating each song manually one by one instead of coming here in the first place, then I could have had been easily done with all this some time ago

EDIT: Just to clarify, by 'tags' I mean the name of any song that I would see when I open a folder containing a song on my computer. Basically the name of any file in Windows.

I'll tell you about the Name, Artist, Album, Genre, Rating and Track Number of my songs. Firstly, Album, genre, Rating and Track Number are random. I do not keep these in any specific order. The Name and Artist however are the same as the "Title" and "Contributing Artists" that I talked about earlier. If I right click a music file, and go to Properties, then under the heading "Details" there would be "Title" and "Contributing Artist". The Title I would type would show up under the heading of "Name" in iTunes. And "Contributing Artists" show up as "Artist" in iTunes. In my previous comment, I explained how I name my Titles and Contributing Artist.

YES! WORKED! I tried the script to manually get about 30 tracks, by clicking Yes or No as you showed in the pictures. Then I made it run automatically. However, for about 30% of my tracks, it told me that it found two songs' names and data in C:\Shaheer42\Music to be matching with another specific song. For example, if it was trying to reconnect "Try - Nadia Ali", it told me that it found two possible songs that could link with "Try - Nadia Ali" and gave the name of those two songs below. Both of these songs had the exact same name, and size and information. I went to C:\Shaheer42\Music to check if there actually existed two such songs, but in the folder there was just one. So, the Script told me type "1" if I wanted to link the song with the first one, and "2" if I wanted to link it with the second one. I just typed 1. Then came another similar message about a different song, but before progressing, I went to iTunes to see whether "Try - Nadia Ali" was working. It was. So in the next song I typed "2". I went to iTunes to see whether that song was working, and again it was. I don't know why these messages keep coming up, but they just came up. So I just quickly hit "1" and then the Enter key, and soon this all was done. And then it gave a report and I went to the library and 95% of my songs do not have an exclamation mark next to them .

Though my work has been done, I just told this all to you so that you could improve the script if you want to for others. One thing however that I did notice that was common between more than 95% of the songs that this problem occurred with was those that has no Genre. Very few files, if any, which had a Genre came up.

Anyways, again THANKS ALOT! Finally, I have my library back