i tunes

The meaning of the message still applies, iTunes can no longer find the file.

Here are two methods for trying to locate the original file:

• Double-click on one of the songs that won't play. You should get a message asking you if you would like to locate the song. You do, so choose Locate.
• That should open the folder where iTunes thinks the file should be. Is the song there, perhaps under a different filename?
• If the folder does not open, is there any useful information that might indicate why there's a problem (i.e has the folder been deleted, renamed or moved)?
• Something I should have asked before; have these songs ever played in iTunes or is this the first time you've tried to use them since adding them to your Library? What I'm trying to ascertain is if the songs were on an external drive or memory key (USB stick) when you added them to iTunes. If so, did you copy the songs onto your computer and then add them to iTunes, or did you simply tell iTunes to use the files on the external drive? If all you did was tell iTunes the file was on the external drive, and now that drive is no longer connected to your computer (or has a different drive letter), that will be the problem

If the first method didn't help much, try this:

• highlight the song and then go to the iTunes top bar menu, and click on Edit/Song Info. This brings up a panel telling you that the song cannot be found, would you like to locate it? Locate or No
• click on the No button, which will open the song's information section (Edit/Song Info/Details)
• click on the File tab at the right hand end
• on the File tab, look for location. It will give you the path, location and filename that it's looking for. Look at the screenshot below:

• Ingore the bit that says file://localhost/ (it may, or may not, be present on your computer). What does the rest of that line tell you?
• In my example, the missing file was last known to be on my C drive /Users / Phil / Music. In other words in the default Music folder on my account
• Each forward slash (the / ) indicates a separate folder. So go down through the folders until you find the one that's the problem. So in my example, I'm looking to see whether the folder named A Fistful of Alice [Live] _ _A_ is present.
• It is, so now I'll look in that folder, for the song file, which should be named 11 Only Women Bleed

Notice that the filename is actually x11 Only Women Bleed. So the reason that iTunes can no longer find it is because it no longer has the same filename that iTunes thinks it should have. If I rename the file to the correct name (i.e. the name it had when I added it to iTunes), it will then play okay.

What have you found?

A message saying that the original file cannot be located means tht iTunes cannot find the file (the song). This could be because you, or another programme, has moved, renamed or deleted the original file.

Have you made any significant changes to your Library recently?