How to Quickly Find Missing Songs in iTunes Library?

Recently, I was going through my hard drive to free up storage when I noticed that for some reason, almost all of my library had duplicate tracks within the folder they were located, for example, it would look like:

Song 2.m4a

Song 1.m4a

Song.m4a

So naturally, I deleted all the duplicates to free up space, only it turns out that itunes was using these duplicates to play the songs, so now whenever I try to play a song it says its missing. I've been gradually going through and locating these songs one at a time but with how large my library is that could take ages. Is there a way I can located all of these files automatically?

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Posted on Mar 24, 2024 9:50 AM

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turingtest2

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Posted on Mar 24, 2024 6:03 PM

Use File > Add to Library and select your media folder. This will add in any files in that folder that are currently unknown to the library. Once done see Duplicate songs in iTunes - Apple Community. The script I reference there is able to clean up the duplicates that are likely after that import phase, in a way that gathers ratings, play counts, and playlist membership from any missing duplicates to the physical files that remain. After deduping turn Keep organized... off and back on again to eliminate any trailing digits from the tracks in your album folders.

tt2

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How to Quickly Find Missing Songs in iTunes Library?

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