Original Music file could not be found. How do I locate it?

The "missing file" issue with exclamation marks happens if the file is no longer where iTunes or Music expects to find it. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the file, one of its parent folders, the drive it lives on has had a name change, or you've moved a non-portable library to a different path (see Make a split library portable for details). It is also possible that iTunes or Music have changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout, or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place, or that you've been too aggressive when deleting duplicates at some point.

Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Cmd-I to get Song Info, then click No when asked to try to locate the track. Look on the file tab for the location the library thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drives. Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, a folder renamed, or a drive label has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions. If the difference between the two paths is an additional Music folder in one path then this is a layout issue. I can explain further if that is the case. If everything is where it is supposed to be try Repair security permissions for iTunes for Mac - Apple Community.

In some cases the library may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps with Get Info, or when playing a track, but this time click Locate and browse to the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links. Although it says something like "use the same location" I think it expects to find the tracks in the same artist & album layout they were in previously, with one systematic change to the path.

If you want me to try to provide specific advice please post back the following details:

1. The location of the media folder under iTunes|Music > Preferences > Advanced
2. The location of a sample missing track shown under Song Info > File > Location that begins file://
3. The true path to the file whose details you gave in 2

See also FixLinks - an AppleScript to repair broken links in Music - Apple Community.

tt2

Hi whitson1981.

Something has broken the connection between the library file and the actual media files. If you have a Time Machine backup, try restoring the library file. Depending on the version of macOS you're running, this will either be a .itl file or a .musiclibrary file.

Restore items backed up with Time Machine on Mac

If you don't have a backup, there are a couple of other options, neither one of which is perfect.

1) Manually reconnect by finding individual media files as you noted originally. This may not be as onerous as it appears. Multiple users have reported in cases like this that finding one song from an album or by an artist will allow the system to find other songs from the same artist or album on its own. There is no guarantee of this though.

2) Create a new library and import the existing files into that.

Use multiple libraries in Music on Mac

After creating a new library, go to File > Add To Library... and choose the entire folder that houses your music. In most cases this will be at ~/Music/Music/Media/Music and ~/Music/Music/Media/Apple Music if you have music added to your library via the Apple Music service. Note that taking this path would mean losing metadata including things like Loved and play counts.

Cheers.

Hello whitson1981 and welcome to Apple Support Communities. It appears you are having some difficulty with "missing" music files.

Is your Music library on an external drive? This most often happens when the connection between iTunes or Music and the drive that houses actual media files has been severed.

Try safe launching iTunes or Music by pressing and holding the Shift key whilst the app launches.

Cheers.