Force iTunes to rescan library?

No. However you can get them into a playlist.

Create a new, regular playlist (named All music).

Drag all music into this playlist.

Create a new smart playlist (named Missing songs).

Match rule:

Playlist is not All music.

Only missing songs will show up in this playlist.

Just select the updated songs (or all songs) then Command I (get info).

That didn't work to well for me.

In almost all artist, all songs are gone but one.

Removing all songs now, and drag the folder back in. That should help.

OMG.

Now iTunes can't find my song. There are missing at least 3000:

http://screencast.com/t/gYHnPPlrq5

Why is this such a hidden feature? I have been deleting the library and adding my folder back for years to correct my library as i update, add or change files or tags on my server....25000 songs and it takes forever! This is an awesome tip thank you so much. it only took about a minute to add 1800 songs and relink everything that had changed! Absolutely Awesome. post is in response to oliveirventurini's suggestion:

File, add to library, choose same directory and itunes scans and repairs, adds to library leaves everything else alone.

Edit: does not remove dead tracks but does put exclaimation mark beside them.....easy enough to find and delete

Chris

Do I use that to delete the songs that have exclamation marks or to add and update files and folders that I've added to my music directory on my server?

It simply updates the library so missing songs will have exclamation marks and any changed metadata will get updated in iTunes.

Oh ok so new workflow is to add files to my server as usual then i can choose add files in itunes and it should add new files then i can select all, get info to update metadata and mark deleted files then i can manually remove those from itunes database. Is there a way to sort by exclaimation mark?

Find my video its working

LeoBabur wrote:

Find my video its working

5 1/2 years later, not sure what this means...

As of July 2015, neither of the above methods appear to work to update changed metadata. Re-adding the library folder appears to add duplicate songs in the case where an album was moved from one sub-folder to another (I have most of my music on a Windows-based server -- we have 4 Windows machines and 2 Macs in the house). Probably the "from" folder in this case will show missing tunes -- haven't examined the results of completely yet, since it's a lot of work to dig thru 18,000-plus songs.

I force quit iTunes then went to the iTunes media folder (mine was located at "/Users/*user*/Music/iTunes") and then deleted the library file. The library file should end with ".itdb". I think there were three of them. I deleted all three. Then I reopened iTunes, clicked "Scan for media" and voila... New library. Depending on how much media you have, your voila might take a while. I have over 600GB of movies and music so mine took a long time to repopulate.

sanmiguel74656 wrote:

I force quit iTunes then went to the iTunes media folder (mine was located at "/Users/*user*/Music/iTunes") and then deleted the library file. The library file should end with ".itdb". I think there were three of them. I deleted all three. Then I reopened iTunes, clicked "Scan for media" and voila... New library. Depending on how much media you have, your voila might take a while. I have over 600GB of movies and music so mine took a long time to repopulate.

???? The .itdb are minor support files for thing like Genius. The main library file ends in .itl. Of course if you get rid of that you start with a fresh library, but no playlists, no ratings, no play count, all dates added being that day, etc. This isn't "re-scanning" it is tearing down to the ground and building all over again.