Is there an easy way of finding all songs in an iTunes for Windows playlist that cannot be found, because of this prompt " The song could not be used because the original file could not be found..." ? I don't need to know how to find the missing files, I just want to be able to find all of those songs that cannot be found.
Thanks,
Windows, Windows 10
Lost & Found Playlists
Create a playlist called Found, select everything in the Songs view (Ctrl+A) and drag it into the Found playlist. Create a smart playlist called Lost with the rule Playlist is not Found and matching with Music items. Your lost tracks will be in this playlist.
Should you or anyone else want to know how to repair the broken tracks, assuming the files still exist, then see this post iTunes Original File Could Not Be Found - Apple Community. I have a script that can potentially relink the missing files.
tt2
Lost & Found Playlists
Create a playlist called Found, select everything in the Songs view (Ctrl+A) and drag it into the Found playlist. Create a smart playlist called Lost with the rule Playlist is not Found and matching with Music items. Your lost tracks will be in this playlist.
Should you or anyone else want to know how to repair the broken tracks, assuming the files still exist, then see this post iTunes Original File Could Not Be Found - Apple Community. I have a script that can potentially relink the missing files.
tt2
Thank you for this. It worked great.
However, I didn't thoroughly explain what I was trying to do.
I wanted to identify all the songs in a particular playlist that could not be found, so I could delete them from that playlist, resulting in that playlist having all songs that were found, and would therefore all play.
Thanks
Sorry, I thought you said it worked great? Once you have the list of lost tracks you can select all of those and delete them. Either you delete all dead tracks from your whole library in one go, which will also remove all broken links in any playlist, or you can work with a specific playlist as the initial source instead of the entire Songs list if you have a reason to work one list at a time.
tt2
I guess I mispoke. Creating the Found and Lost playlists worked great.
What I did, from my original Playlist A, which had 11,000 songs on it, was create a Found, and I dragged all those 11,000 songs to Found. Then I created a Smart Lost playlist as you instructed, and that had 800 songs on it. However, my original Playlist A still has all those 11,000 songs, including the 800 songs that were identified in the Lost playlist.
Are you saying that if I deleted those 800 songs from the Lost playlist, they will also be deleted from my original A Playlist ?
Thanks again,
Steve Mc209 wrote:
Are you saying that if I deleted those 800 songs from the Lost playlist, they will also be deleted from my original A Playlist ?
Delete them from the library and they are deleted from all playlists too.
tt2
You're welcome. 🙂
tt2
Does this mean that there's no way to do what I want to do ?
Thank you. And thank you for your patience with me.
You're most welcome. 🙂
tt2
Finding all songs that cannot be found in an iTunes Playlist
