Deleting 'orphan' files

Sorry - too many typos (in a hurry)

Trying again:


First an admission. I've had iTunes since it come out and still haven't got a clue how it's supposed to work. I'm probably the the only person in the world who finds it totally counter-intuitive, and I get hopelessly lost whenever I try to have anything to do with it.

Be that as it may.

Is there an easy way to delete all your 'orphans' - i.e. titles listed in iTunes which can no longer find a file to play.

I now seem to have about 10 versions of every CD I've ever imported, but only a couple of them are any good (no idea why).

If I click to play one of these orphans (which are the vast majority of tracks now - because I've thrown away most of the rubbish that iTunes has created around my mac, (and just play my CDs in a CD player, like you're supposed to), I get this message: 'original file could not be found, would you like to locate it' and I want to scream NO NO NO. Just rid me of these ghosts!

I would like to do a 'delete all orphans' or something. Does such a thing exist by any chance?

Also, if I rename files on my hard drive, then import them, the tracks revert to the original names on the drive, as if I hadn't just renamed them.

Is this voodoo?

Thanks

Tom

Thanks

For the benefit of anyone else who drops by - this is what I did.

I opened the Music folder and just went through deleting everything. Those that had lost their linked files disappeared, and those that had not asked a question if I wanted to delete, so I could opt in or out at that point.

Took a while but the junk has finally departed.