Albums visible in iTunes with exclamation points

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Level 1

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Albums visible in iTunes with exclamation points

I suddenly found that about half my music is missing from iTunes and none of the posted solutions have worked. I've been building a library for 10+ years with mostly CDs ripped in. I can see the albums in iTunes but the music is missing. When I try to play a song I get the exclamation point with the message that iTunes can't find the file. Neither can I - the files are just gone. I even use time machine back up but they're gone from there too. I am stumped - any solutions found? I use Mac Mojave and I don't have Apple Music or iTunes Match.

Posted on Aug 26, 2019 7:26 PM

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Answer 1

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turingtest2

Level 10

274,430 points

Aug 27, 2019 1:35 PM in response to omg99

Is any of this missing content on a device it could potentially be recovered from? See Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device - Apple Community. If you select a track with an exclamation mark, press Cmd+I to get Song Info, and say no when iTunes asks you to locate the track it should shown the last known location on the File tab. Does that give you any help in locating the missing item? E.g. external drive not currently connected. Compare the path with a file that can be found, is there an extra Music folder in one but not the other? Now you know were a missing file was supposed to be does that help when drilling down through Time Machine?

tt2

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Answer 2

omg99 Author

Level 1

12 points

Aug 27, 2019 7:18 PM in response to turingtest2

This was very helpful - thanks. Turns out the missing music was last "seen" in a trash folder! I guess I must have deleted them all at some point, thinking they were safe inside iTunes. It was all working fine until the last update, though. Maybe at that point they got permanently deleted or something? I could not find the hidden trash file in the time machine backup, but I still have all the CDs so can rip them back in. Just takes time. I appreciate the help though - and I guess it's safest to not delete anything in the future.

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Answer 3

turingtest2

Level 10

274,430 points

Aug 28, 2019 1:52 AM in response to omg99

Right, iTunes is an index to the content on the hard drive. If you discard the media files after adding to the library then iTunes won't be able to find them to play them. Ideally you'd not only leave the tracks alone after adding to the library but would make a full copy of the iTunes folder on an external drive as a backup.

tt2

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Albums visible in iTunes with exclamation points

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