Missing files on iTunes

The "missing file" issue with exclamation marks happens if the file is no longer where iTunes 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, or the drive it lives on has had a change of drive letter, 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 has 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. See Getting iTunes & Windows Media Player to play nicely if you're trying to access your media with any other media players.

Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to Get Info, then click No when asked to try to locate the track. Look on the file tab for the location that iTunes thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drive(s). Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, a folder renamed, or a drive letter 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 Windows.

In some cases iTunes 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 another application like Windows Media Player has moved/renamed the files, or the library has been moved from OS X to Windows, then the chances are that subtle differences in naming strategies will make it hard to restore the media to the precise path that iTunes is expecting. In such cases, as long as the missing files can be found somewhere, you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes. See this post for an explanation of how it works. It might need some tweaking if your media is in a non-standard layout.

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

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

Note the addition of file://localhost/ (and the flipped direction of slashes in Windows) is normal for a file that isn't quite where iTunes is expecting to find it.

tt2

How did you move the files? You should have done this within iTunes, not simply with File Explorer. See the 'If a song no longer appears in iTunes' section in:

Change where iTunes files are stored on PC - Apple Support

There is a bug in recent builds of iTunes that, at least for some users, seems to stop the media folder preference from being saved properly. See Make a split library portable - Apple Community and put your library in a shape that isn't affected by the issue, and is easier to backup and move around in future.

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andyfrombury st edmunds wrote:

I have moved many files, both within File Explorer and then within iTunes

What do you mean by moving files within iTunes? You cannot move a file from inside iTunes. You can of course, move songs inside iTunes, but what that typically means is moving them in or out of Playlists.

Note the difference between a file and a song:

• • a file is the computer file seen in Windows Explorer. That file may be a song, a document, or picture etc.
  • a song is entry listed in iTunes. When you ask iTunes to play a song, iTunes looks for the file (for that song) and reads it to you as audio

If you move a file (belonging to a song) once you have told iTunes where the file for it is located, then iTunes will still list the song, but it will not be ab le to find the file for it because you have moved it. That's how it knows that 319 songs are missing.

Songs are not "in iTunes". Instead, iTunes is a database that lists the songs and it knows where the file is located for each song. If you move a file, then it no longer knows where the file is. Hence your current dilemma.

As you may have noticed, after finding one song, iTunes asks if you would like to use that folder to locate all the remaining missing songs. But since you're looking in the folder for one album, iTunes will only find the rest of that album, not everything that's missing.

But at least you're making progress.

Semantics aside, I was trying to emphasise that you cannot randomly move the files (that are the source of the music that you hear) after adding them to iTunes without causing the exact issue that you currently have: 300 missing songs.