After syncing with iTunes, the majority of my playlist/albums are duplicated. At first I thought this confined to only iTunes purchases, but other tracks are also affected. My album art is a mess as well. Lots, but not all are mismatched. I am using the current iTunes and IOS. Any help would be appreciated.
iPhone XR
If you're seeing iTunes purchases as cloudy duplicates try signing out of the iTunes Store, then sign in again. For true duplicates in the library see Deleting duplicate tracks - Apple Community.
tt2
Hello IrishAC,
Welcome to Apple Support Communities. I understand from your post that after syncing with iTunes the majority of your playlists and albums are duplicated. I am happy to help remove the duplicates you are seeing.
The article below will provide steps to take to delete the duplicates.
Delete music, movies, and TV shows from your device
Keep me posted on your progress.
Have a great day!
I'd be tempted to start with the process in Move your iTunes library to a new computer - Apple Community first, and then use your device to recover any items you cannot retrieve from the original computer. It is somewhat easier than trying to pull out all of the content, playlists, ratings, etc. from the device. Using SyncToy to copy content from one potentially dodgy drive to a fresh one beats using Windows Explorer as SyncToy can carry on after it has hit an unreadable file. Explorer just crashes and then you don't know what has and hasn't been copied.
tt2
Ah yes, in that case retrieve what is on the device into a fresh library, and then see if there is any other media that can be usefully recovered from elsewhere.
tt2
Its not easy is it? I'm returning to itunes after a long break, a house move and new email and two laptops later. I copied all my itunes files and music from my PC to an external hard drive and I decided to install itunes to this new laptop, fine. I attached the external drive and downloaded everything I had in music and itunes.
IT IS A MESS! lots of missing artwork, songs and albums with the dreaded exclamation mark and having to manually fill in gaps but still no artwork for some albums. When i tried to delete all the tracks with exclamation marks i received awarning message I might lose information. I'm terrified to attach my ipod and losing the musicexisting on it, its just awful!
it never has been a user friendly programme.
As for broken links see iTunes Original File Could Not Be Found - Apple Community for a possible way to fix those. Alternatively see Move your iTunes library to a new computer - Apple Community if the library is still accessible on your previous computer.
tt2
Hi , Thank you but they are not iTunes purchases they are albums copied from CDs mostly , they are not greyed out but when I click on them to play I get the message that the song could not be used and do I want iTunes to locate it for me. I then have to go into my music files on my hard drive, select the tracks, copy and paste into iTunes, which leaves the tracks with the exclamation mark, leaving two tracks one which will play and the other which wont play
I moved my files a few years ago to an external hard drive. I still have my old tower hard drive in the garage I might have to haul that in to the house tomorrow. meanwhile i'
m going to try copying a cd into my library , hopefully I can copy new tracks to my ipod without syncing.
See my reply to you rather than the one to IrishAC.
If your iPod is set up for manual management it should let you add new items. If it was previously synced and you're using a migrated copy of the same library you ought to be able to sync, but broken links in the library won't help. As a last resort see Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device - Apple Community.
tt2
that's a great help turingtest2. When I have some undisturbed time to concentrate, I will try following the steps. Just one question, should I delete my iTunes library that I started yesterday with files from my external drive. its in such a muddle . Or will transferring from my ipod solve everything? I found my folder of art work on my old laptop btw.
the trouble is I messed up when I didn't know what I was doing when I tried to set up iTunes on my last laptop in or around 2007. I didn't attach my ipod but itunes library synched to the music I had on the new lap top . that's why its messy now with me adding on the files I had saved on my external drive. if I could retrieve my old library pre 2007 from iTunes that would help. Otherwise I'll have to work with what I've got.
I think that explorer did crash before every file was copied from the external hard drive to this laptop.
I've still to look at the old tower drive everything related to iTunes should still be intact on that.
sorry, I didn't notice that reply wasn't for me. I'm new to this.
No worries. I just addressed the original poster's question first, before adding some additional information relevant to your situation.
tt2
do I start a new library on iTunes?
Duplicate tracks on my iPhone XR after iTunes sync and album art is mixed up
