! in front of songs on itunes library

The ! next to the songs can mean several things. The files have been moved from the iTunes music folder, or deleted from your computer entirely. Or the song files have been renamed/edited or otherwise changed by some method other than iTunes. In any event, iTunes has lost track of these song files.

You can use Explorer to search your computer for missing songs.

On the Start menu, click "Search".

Select "All Files and folders".

In the "All or part of the file name" field, type the song name and then click "Search".

If you see the file you are looking for in the Search Results window, you can add it back into your iTunes library.

See: How to add songs from your hard drive to iTunes.

the search results always came up with just a notepad of songs and their details

Sounds to me like that's the iTunes library .xml file. This contains details of songs like album artist info, play count, album artwork etc. It doesn't contain any actual songs.

I don't know what else to suggest except to double click on one of the songs with the ! next to in iTunes (as if you were going to play it). That should bring up a dialogue box telling you iTunes can't find the file and ask if you want iTunes to look for it.

See if that gets you a better result.