Find if albums have missing tracks

Coaster750 wrote:

It strikes me that if iTunes knows that there are, say, 11 tracks to that album, it should be possible to get iTunes to count how many are actually there. Wishful thinking?

Well... not quite, but there are a couple of indicators or methods, dependant upon why the song is now missing.

First of all though, why are they missing, because iTunes is not in the habit of deleting songs unless you tell it to, or of losing songs unless you or another programme renames, moves or deletes the file or the path to the file?

• • no entry at all for the song: presumably, you deleted the entry (it wasn't iTunes). In this case, you should be able to find the file for the missing song in the appropriate folder on your computer. See below
  • the entry for the song is there, but it doesn't play and an exclamation mark appears next to the title

You can check the album as follows:

• in the Songs View, you can select the album and look at the Track No. column (see screenshot below) and compare it with the Status Bar number shown:

• in the screenshot, notice that a specific album is selected (in the Albums column)
• the Track No. column states x of 10 for each track (ignore the fact that the track numbers are not in numeric order - that is not unusual). This field is not always completed (dependant upon where the album came from), but in this case, the fact that every track says "of 10" suggests that the full album has 10 tracks
• the Status Bar says that the selected album contains 10 items. From this, we can see that this album has all ten songs listed in iTunes. None of them have an exclamation mark to the left of the title and more importantly, if I play each one, they all play
• this album appears to be complete
• using the album I've shown here as an example; if the number of items is less than the "of 10" figure, that indicates that some songs are missing. However, if you only purchased some but not all the songs, or you only ripped some but not all the songs from the CD, the total tracks number would still say 10, so you would be misled by the numbers

Finding missing songs:

1. If there is an entry for the song, but iTunes can no longer find the file for the song, then when you try to play that song (or sync it to a device) an exclamation mark will appear next to the song's title. In this event, it's the exclamation mark or a message at Sync time that lets you know that songs are missing
   1. this can happen if the name of the file or the path to it has been changed (and it isn't iTunes that does this) or if the file has been moved or deleted (again, it isn't iTunes that will have done this). In this case, you have to determine what was done and you have to fix it (that is, either rename the file back to its original name, move it back to where it should be or undo the delete). Once fixed, if you then try playing the song iTunes should manage this and the problem will be fixed for that song. See the screenshot at the bottom of this post that shows finding the menu
2. If the entry for the song is no longer in iTunes, use one of the other tracks on the album to find the location for the files on the album: right-click a song and choose Open in Windows Explorer. This opens the folder with that song in it. A song's filename is usually recognisable, such as <song title> or <artist-song title>. In theory, the file for every song on that album should be there. It is possible to use another method here, but let's do one thing at a time
   1. if you can see the missing song's file, return to your iTunes Library and using iTunes' top bar menu, click on File/Add Song to Library. Navigate to the folder with the file, select it and click on the Open button. This adds the song to the library
   2. If the file is not there, because you deleted it, look for the file in Windows's Recycle Bin. If you find it, right-click it and choose Restore, which puts the file back where it was. If the file is no longer in the Recycle Bin (which auto-deletes items after a set period), then you will have to go back to your original source for the file

You may need additional help once you have identified the cause of the problem. If so, please ask. Once the common cause is known, we can provide any additional information needed to add them back into your library.