how to delete duplicated songs all at one time?

As it stands I'm pretty sure the current version of the script ignores cloud copies but I would need to double check. Apple haven't updated the iTunes script interface since 2009 so working with cloud items is a bit hit and miss.

Can I check what you do and don't have, and have done so far?

You have all of the media, but it was stored on the desktop which you had backed up?

You don't have your original iTunes Library.itl file, but when you signed into to iTunes with your Apple ID you content was shown in the cloud due to iTunes Match?

You've imported the contents of your desktop folders into the library which is now trying to reconcile that with iTunes Match?

I don't have iTunes Match, but my limited experience testing iCloud Music Library suggests that iTunes should attempt to "match up" local files with the cloud items effectively deduping the collection. Whether it does the right thing with ratings, play counts, playlist membership etc. is anyone's guess.

tt2

This is very helpful many thanks - just one question: when you see all the Duplicates after selecting show Duplicates in the menu, does this mean if you select the Duplicates there is still one original left of the same kind?

This may seem obvious but i just deleted 4 duplicates and then looking at 'Show All Files' I couldn't find a single copy of the files I just trashed?

i.e. if you have 4 Duplicates should you only select and Trash 3 of them?

Thanks for your patience

Thanks again! You have answered my question - in fact since I put the post up here I have been going painstakingly through my iTunes and selecting and deleting duplicates leaving 1 of the originals.

Often there are up to 3/4 exact duplicates.

It would be great if there was a script or key combination which added one more criterion: 'Show Exact Duplicates and Delete All but One of them'

musicspirit wrote:

It would be great if there was a script or key combination which added one more criterion: 'Show Exact Duplicates and Delete All but One of them'

That's just what my free Windows script does. For Mac there is Dupin or Dupin Lite from Doug's Scripts.

tt2

Hi tt2 whenever i delete a duplicate song it deletes the original too and i have no way of getting it back ive tried to download them from purchases too i have songs on my phone which i cant get back to my computer and vice versa because of this reason

EDIT: i also dont want to sync my phone to my computer because it will wipe those songs

I should rephrase this it's not that i deleted them it's that recently ive been getting new computers and everytime it syncs some songs will just disappear and i have no way of getting them back and the only way i can get them back is what seems like rebuying them and i don't want to do that. I haven't found any forums that touch on this topic.

Hello Mr Turingtest2

As many have said, your dedication and willingness to help so many people, for free no less, to solve these problems (when Apple itself won't, no less!) is unbelievably amazing, and I thank you.

I couldn't find mention of this issue in the 30 pages of this thread (forgive me if I missed it):

everytime I run deduper, it crashes on: "Pass 6, processing 4 of (whatever number was selected)"
Everytime. I have tried selecting different subsets of duplicate files, within a playlist, with Exact duplicates, regular duplicates, running the script via command prompt vs regular WBSH, automatically delete and manually confirm.

Occasionally it makes it to file 5 (especially with manual confirmation), but it never gets to more than 5 (or less than 4).

If I only select 6 files (3 dupes), it goes to completion and shows the success screen.
It appears to actually be removing those first 3 or 4 duplicates before crashing.

The short version of the error message:
"AppName: wscript.exe AppVer: 5.7.0.18066 ModName: atl100.dll
ModVer: 10.0.30319.1 Offset: 000042a4"

I could post the technical info, but its quite long, so I'll only do it if it might be helpful, to not clutter up the thread...

Any idea what would cause it to crash specifically on the 4th file it processes?
I'm (still) using XP, itunes 12.0.1.26

Thanks again

Afraid not - the only error message comes up from windows, the Microsoft (R) Windows Based Script Host.
DeDuper itself stays open and has no error message - it just freezes at "Pass 6, processing 5 of [however many files I selected]" indefinitely.

The "technical information" begins" Code: 0xc0000005 Flags: 0X00000000 Record: 0x0000000000000000 Address: 0x0000000078a642a4"

and then 78 modules about a bunch of dll's

Nothing about lines.

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I've been swamped at work lately and this one slipped my mind.

I cannot recreate the error at my end and without knowing exactly where in the script it is happening it is somewhat tricky to guess what might be going wrong. Try changing the initialization of archive from False to True on what should currently be line 155:

Archive=False ' Flag to archive at <Media Folder>\Archive instead of deleting

I'm hoping it is something in the file delete code, so not deleting the files will work around it, and you can clean up the <Media Folder>\Archive folder manually.

tt2

Hey, no worries man!

I wouldn't have had time to try it until now anyway.

So, it seemed it was working at first - it got way past number 5.
Eventually it still crashed, but with a totally different error message, this one does have a ine number:

Script: C:\Documents...\Deduper.vbs
Line: 420
Char: 17
Error: Bad file name or number
Code: 800A0034
Source: Microsoft VBScript runtime error

It went from 118 duplicates down to 72 before it crashed, so processing 46 is a big improvement from 4 at a time!

Second time I tried, it went directly to the same error.
Next I tried clicking "no" when it asks whether to delete alternate format tracks, and it was able to finish without error.

I tried again with option yes (include alternate dupes), and sometimes it crashes it crashes instantly, other times it processes a few (maybe a dozen) before crashing with the same error as above.

I did your suggestions in reverse order.

Anti-virus is Panda, disabled, no change.

Checked permissions, they were already full, applied to "children", took a while, tried again, no change.

Then I added the line of code... and while I had to verify every change one by one, it went through the entire library with no errors.

Having to hit "enter" for each one was still a whole lot better than manually selecting several hundred files, so I consider this a win.

Thank again.

People like you, who spend their free time helping strangers on the internet is what gives me hope for the human race!

Basically, what happened was some iTunes updates kept erasing my playlists and some songs got copied over to my C:\ drive by iTunes. I eventually got so frustrated that I allowed iTunes to "consolidate" in an attempt to deal with my library referencing songs in 3 different locations (and probably all physically duplicated in each of those locations). I really care less about albums and the album metadata, I prefer to organize by artist and song. Each of my songs should have the proper Artist and Song metadata - I've done this manually over the years to deal with iPod sort issues.

When iTunes did this, it renamed my files to "[track number] - [song]" in the default C:\ drive location.

I was able to find a script to rename my files back to how I like them "[artist] - [song title]" in my D:\Users\Michael\Music folder.

After I solve this, I want to try your "SyncStats" tool...I have a iPod that I haven't plugged in for a while I'd like to sync data from. Maybe it would be easier to rescue song and metadata in full from my iPod? Although that would require renaming all of the files again once they're pulled off.

Correct. Most of the broken links are in the consolidated iTunes format you described. Trying to match those with my preferred format that I've resurrected is proving difficult. My iPod is only 4GB so not all of my songs are on it but my preferred ones are.

The reason I've always done this is really just So my iPod is easier for me to scroll through. Also, digital media made the concept of albums dead to me.

/Rant

A similar habit of mine is IIl usually put secondary artists in the song title (i.e. Jay-Z - Run This Town [feat. Rihanna and Kanye West].mp3. I've never liked having one artist for only one song when it's a collaboration or rename Ozzy Osborne to Black Sabbath, Gwen Steffani to No Doubt to keep them all together. Shoot me, I guess. Nevertheless, iTunes over the last 12+ years has slowly been corrupting my way of doing things and is winning this quasi war of attrition with me. The benefit is I updated my entire libraries metadata as I added music to meet these needs so I've never had to do a massive metadata fix for artists or song titles (although, I guess now days it's easy with some of the programs out there).

/endrant

Any best strategies on how I could handle this broken links issue with a merge to my .mp3's in the format I have or is it lost?

I have just under 900 broken songs.

There doesn't seem to be a pattern. Sometimes the year and track numbers don't match, other than that, not much.

Can the script be run to only care about meta data artist, meta data song, and possibly a second script that also check file name after the last "-" (which would be a song name)?

Could you take a screenshot of a section of the media folder in list view listing say a dozen tracks in the various different naming schemes you have used and mark out which, if any, have been successfully reconnected? I should be able to tweak the rules of the script to find the remainder once I can see what it isn't picking up.

tt2