Fixing the "could not locate the original file" error for a large amount of music files

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

Ideally you would have included the full filename and extension for the third item but assuming that is unchanged then it seems your tracks are in an <Artist> - <Name>.<Ext> layout in the main Music subfolder of the media folder. While my script can potentially identify and fix tracks of this form moving the file back to the Downloads folder as suggested earlier by the fiend is an easier way to go. Close iTunes, move those files that you moved recently into ..\iTunes Media\Music (and only those) back to the Downloads folder, launch iTunes, and they should play as before. Then you use the consolidate library feature which will copy in each track that is outside of the media folder and relink the library to the new copies. Once that is done you can manually discard the original files from the Downloads folder.

tt2

Zack_Saavedra wrote:

Can someone explain any method I can use to mass remove the exclamation marks from these songs please?

Put the files back in the folder that you removed them from.

As long as you put the files back in the same place the next time you ask iTunes to play the song it will find the file for it as it will be where iTunes expects it to be.