importing music without duplication - consolidation

I can't think of an automatic way to only import those tracks which are not in your current library. However if you import all the tracks, then hold down the SHIFT key (or it might be Option on a Mac) and click *File > Display Exact Duplicates* then you should get a list of all tracks which have the same track information. If you sort this list on *Date Added* then remove all the tracks imported today you should achieve the desired result.

tt2

It gets even worse when you have multiple users on the same iMac. Each user account has their own Itunes config, and it duplicates the iTunes directory. After repoint all of their folders to the shared/user/music folder I was able to get all the tracks in one location. But then it took me 2 hours of sorting through and deleting the 4 versions of each song it put in there.

iTunes really has to be one of the worst track management programs out there. Apple product management needs to get their act together.

If you turn off the advanced preference to *Copy files to the iTunes media folder when adding to library* then no file duplication need occur. Once your libray only contains the original files plus the new non-duplicates you can then *Consolidate Library* to create the local copies.

Correctly identifying duplicates is a non-trivial process which is probably why there isn't an automatic filter.

tt2