exclamation marks and duplicates

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exclamation marks and duplicates

A while ago I messed up when copying my library to and exhd. Anyway I have cocked up again in a different way and I have 3 copies of songs in my itunes library, one of each has no tick next to it because I went through the whole library weeks ago and unchecked one of everything, these also have an exclamation mark next to them. Then some have exclamation marks and ticks.
Confused? I am!
Anyway what I want to know is whether I can somehow delete the whole library and then just somehow get one of everything back, or somehow bulk delete these exclamation lists?
My ipod is on autosync so I daren't connect it incase I lose some things or end up with tthousands of duplicates on the ipod.
Any help appreciated....

Windows 2000

Posted on Aug 10, 2009 3:53 AM

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Answer 1

polydorus

Level 6

11,967 points

Aug 10, 2009 6:16 AM in response to shiggsy

If you don't care about counts ratings and playlists, you can simply create a new library.
Close iTunes and drag iTunes Library.itl out of the iTunes folder to the desk top.
When you open iTunes again, your library will be empty, now use File>>Add folder to library..." to add your iTunes Music folder.

There are also ways of eliminating the tracks with exclamation marks, but the above method is simplest.

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Answer 2

shiggsy Author

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Aug 11, 2009 6:43 AM in response to shiggsy

Thank you for your reply. Could you just explain what itunes.itl is that I need to drag onto my desk top?

If I go into my music I then have a main folder called itunes, which then has within it other folders, one called itunes music which is a file which has copies of all the music in and another which is called itunes library which is a database file, which also has copies of all the music in. There are also other files in the main one. Just want to be sure of what I need to drag out!
Thanks again.

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Answer 3

polydorus

Level 6

11,967 points

Aug 11, 2009 7:34 AM in response to shiggsy

iTunes Library.itl in the iTunes folder is the file where iTunes stores the information about your library, tracks, ratings, counts, playlists.

You drag it to the desk top so iTunes can't find it and creates a new empty library. The desktop is just a convenient place to put it without deleting it, you might want to put it back.

When you add your music folder to iTunes, all the tracks with exclamation marks will be gone and you will only have entries for the files actually in your iTune music folder. This only addresses tracks with exclamation marks which are dead links, it does nothing about duplicate files.

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Answer 4

sonoma03

Level 1

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Aug 11, 2009 1:01 PM in response to polydorus

I also have a question related to tracks with the exclamation marks and dead links. I didn't want to recreate my library from scratch because I wanted to retain the comments and ratings info that I had already input, so I tried to do "Add Folder to Library" and to add in all the songs in my iTunes library again. This worked, but now I have 2 listings for every track in my library, one with the dead link and one with a valid link. Is there any way to remove all of the dead links without deleting them one by one? I have over 10,000 tracks in the library so that would take forever!

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Answer 5

polydorus

Level 6

11,967 points

Aug 11, 2009 1:35 PM in response to sonoma03

sonoma03
You will find a script to remove dead tracks here:
http://mysite.verizon.net/teridon/itunesscripts/
itunes removenotfound

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Answer 6

sonoma03

Level 1

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Aug 11, 2009 1:55 PM in response to polydorus

Thanks for the pointer! Someone also suggested just sorting the track list based on "Date Added" to put all of the dead link tracks together, which would make it a lot easier to delete a large number of them at once. I'll try that first, and try the script if I have any problems.

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