Show all unplayable songs in iTunes

Question

Show all unplayable songs in iTunes

Is there a way to automatically show unplayable songs in iTunes? Because of hard drive issues, many of my songs pop up with an exclamation point when I try to play them and I have to locate the file or reload the song from CD. The problem is that I have to click on every song to see if it's playable or not. How can I show them all?

Mac G5, Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on Jul 17, 2009 2:57 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

rockmyplimsoul

Level 6

11,155 points

Jul 17, 2009 3:44 PM in response to Stefanie Hutchins

Easy, "dead" songs that are missing their native file cannot be added to a regular playlist, so to identify these:

1- Create a regular playlist, not a smart playlist. For this example, call the playlist "Alive".

2- Select all tracks in your main library and drag them into "Alive". Any "dead" tracks with no native file will not appear in this playlist.

3- Create a smart playlist defined as: Playlist -- Is Not -- Alive. Call this playlist "Dead".

You now have a list of "!" songs which are missing their native files. This won't fix the tracks, but it identifies them for you in case you want to delete them from your library. To do that, select all songs in the "Dead" playlist and press the Shift key as you delete (Option-Delete on a Mac).

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Answer 2

Jul 17, 2009 4:03 PM in response to Stefanie Hutchins

Thanks!!! That worked perfectly! Now if I could only fix the songs that easily...

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Answer 3

Dec 22, 2012 11:32 PM in response to rockmyplimsoul

Just stumbled upon another way to do this: not as elegant, but it is a way to highlight all the " ! " songs in a relatively short amount of time.

- "iTunes" --> "Preferences", which brings up the "Playback Preferences" dialogue box

- click the "Playback" tab

- click "Sound Check" --> "OK"

This prompts iTunes to cycle through your entire songlist to even out the sound levels, and after a few minutes (depending on how many thousand songs you have), you see all the " ! " songs highlighted.

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Answer 4

Mar 17, 2014 8:56 PM in response to rockmyplimsoul

Years later, iTunes 11.1.3 (8), but only OSX 10.8.5, 17 Mar 2014.
Just to alert anyone interested that rockmyplimsoul also has solved my problem with his/her elegant procedure: it STILL works! BTW my "Dead" smart playlist lists 12811 tracks! The added perc. is that this caused the library to have marked all these tracks with circled "!" so I can sort thru the library and try to rescue some of the worst situations by hand, unless I can recruit one of Doug's scripts to help me. Obviously I will never be able to rescue all 12811 tracks by hand.

If anyone has suggestions on how to proceed from here, I'd be most gratified for a lead.

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Answer 5

sforny

Level 1

0 points

Aug 9, 2014 3:44 PM in response to whappen'd?

Just want to say I had this issue and typed it into google and came across this page and I'm so very grateful! Fixed my issue right up. You're a legend rockmyplimsoul!

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