losing names when add mp3 files no tags or renamed to itunes windows xp

Turn off the iTunes preference to *Keep iTunes Media folder organised* as if you let iTunes apply its rules to tracks without complete tag information you will lose the information you may currently have via the parent folder names.

Before importing into iTunes use a tag editor to create tags and populate fields such as Album, Artist, Track Name & Number from the filename/folder structure. MediaMonkey is one example of a program that can do this and is also a handy alternative media player/manager. If you do choose to use MediaMonkey then I suggest that during installation you uncheck all its options to take over file associations and, one installed, set its tag creation options to only generate ID3v2.3 tags. Likewise if you choose to use another tool only generate v2.3 tags and not a combination of v1.x & v2.x tags as iTunes works best with a single tag. For files that currently have tags try to make sure that they only contain a v2.x tag.

iTunes doesn't care where your files are located or what they are called - it works with tags. As you've discovered it has a very crude mechanism for converting the file name into a Track Name when there is no tag, but that's as far as it goes. You can use playlists for organising within itunes. The genre and grouping fields may also prove useful. Genre does what it says, but the grouping could be edited before you import into iTunes to record aspects of your strcuture that you want to be able to access in iTunes. E.g. If you have a folder containing says stuff you call "Dance" regardless of the genre embedded in the tags then setting the grouping field to "Dance" before import would let you have access to this selection criteria from within iTunes.

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As with most media tools you can update common properties of many files, e.g. all tracks in an album, in both iTunes & MediaMonkey, by selecting the files you want to alter and then using the *Get Info.* or Properties dialogs respectively.

A typical structure for media files is *Artist\Album\## Track*. In MediaMonkey *Auto-Tag from Filename* using the string *<Artist>\<Album>\<Track#> <Tiitle>* would populate the four fields from the filename & path. If your untagged files have a different structure than simply create a pattern that reflects it and apply to a few test files. Once you're happy things work as you wish you can apply choose the All node in the MediaMonkey browse to select all files in a given folder and its subfolders to be processed. N.b. making a complete backup before you start is a good idea.

You can let MediaMonkey scan your entire media folder and build a complete alternate library, but I just use it to browse into particular folders to tweak things the way I like them, e.g. I use *Auto-Organise Files* for my compilation tracks with the command *..\..\<Album Artist>\<Album><Track#:2> <Title> - <Artist>* which ensures that the full path reflects any changes I've made to the tags and means all of the key data in the tag could be reconstructed from the filename/path. For regular albums where artist and album artist are the same I leave out the trailing " - <Artist>". After renaming files I remove & reimport into iTunes.

If you have files that are already in iTunes and you edit the tags outside of iTunes *without renaming* then you get iTunes to update its information from the tags by selecting the relevant tracks, using CTRL-I to "Get Info.", then clicking OK +without making any changes+. iTunes should now display the changed information.

If you import everything into MediaMonkey then you can use the search features to find tracks regardless of where they are stored.

You can use whichever layout you wish for artist names, however you might prefer to use *Liona Boyd* as the Artist name, and then when you finally import into iTunes you can use its Sort Artist & Sort Album fields so that she is sorted under *Boyd, L*.

For more on organising things within iTunes see http://www.samsoft.org.uk/iTunes.grouping.asp

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