"Move to Trash" doesn't delete songs?

Try command+option+delete I have my iTunes set up differently from you so I can't test what that sequence does under the setup most people use.

Limnos wrote:

Try command+option+delete

FYI:

Option is not needed.

Command Delete does the same.

I have seen this with deleting movies from my itunes library which is held on an external drive. When I delete i.e. delete files and remove from library, they do not appear in the trash on the iMac itself, they just go straight off. I am therefore very careful about what I delete.

JungleNYC wrote:

I have my iTunes on an external HD, and I recently scoured my library and found a bunch of dupes, and songs I didn't want. I gave them all "1 STAR", selected them all, and CMD-DELETED them.

I got the dialog "move to trash", and I clicked it.

Only it did NOT move anything to the trash!

I checked a bunch of the artist folders in my /MUSIC folder, and the songs ARE NOT there.

But they're NOT in the trash, and I did NOT gain any HD space back.

(I have "copy to my iTunes library" checked btw, which is how I want it)

Where are these songs GOING?!?!

tia

The option to delete the file only comes up if the file in question is in the iTunes Media folder. If it is not, the library entry will be deleted, but the file will stay in its position.

In your case, you did a bunch of once and likely included files that were some inside and some outside the iTunes Media folder. You got the dialog because of the some that were, but the some that were not did not actually get deleted.

The ones that did not get deleted are most likely exactly where they were. You can no longer use iTunes to find them, since they no longer have library entries, but they should turn up on a search in Finder.

JungleNYC wrote:

Nope.

My iTunes media folder IS my external drive. I have it set up in iTunes that way. Always have.

That does not mean there are not songs in other places.

With an external drive, if you launch iTunes and the external is not ready, the iTunes media folder will default to /Music/iTunes/.

Look in /Music/iTunes/iTunes media/Music folder for any songs.

Get a copy of easyFind. Try to remember the name of one of the files you deleted. See if EF can find where it is.

Have you restarted your computer recently?

Hi Jungle - I have exactly the same issue:

itunes media folder set as default for itunes from day 1 on my external hard drive connected to my new mac mini Lion OS.

I have deleted duplicates using exactly the same method, via itunes "move to trash" and now they are not in itunes library and not in the trash !! I know they are still somewhere because I have not gained any hard drive space.

Eventually, when I looked in Finder under All my Files - The number of itunes items listed under itunes in this view is exactly equal to the number of remaining items in my itunes library PLUS the number of items I had moved to Trash !!

Therefore I am presuming that they are still there "somewhere". My only problem is that from this view I cannot identify which are the duplicates I had "deleted" when I moved them to trash in the first place, so I cannot identify the items I need to drag into Trash "again" to hard delete...

Can someone please help ?

Same here. I've confirmed this behavior on 2 macs. Both are running 10.7.3. One of the macs has all music in an external disk, then other uses a completely standard configuration. On both machines, I've checked "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" and "Copy filees to iTunes Media folder when adding to library".

On both of these macs, I've found that option-deleting tunes and clicking "Move to Trash" does not dependably do this. It does *sometimes* move the files to the Finder trash, but only about 20% of the time. I cannot find a pattern for when it does or doesn't do this.

At this point, the only way I can clear tunes (or movies) from my library is to select things item by item, show them in Finder one at a time, option delete the items in iTunes, and then manually delete the item from the Finder.

I've noted in Finder that the duplicates contin " (1) " in their filename, hence I was able to do a search on this string in the filenames and able to drag these items in the Trash and finally free up my disk space.

Seems to be ok for me in the end, but clearly the original Delete and Move to Trash from iTunes should work in the first place. Thanks for your comments hope this helps.

I have my iTunes on an external HD, and I recently scoured my library and found a bunch of dupes, and songs I didn't want. I gave them all "1 STAR", selected them all, and CMD-DELETED them.

I got the dialog "move to trash", and I clicked it.

Only it did NOT move anything to the trash!

I am not surprised.

Since you are deleting from the EXT drive, it's most likely they went into the hidden .Trash folder on THAT external drive, and NOT the trashcan you see on your desktop running off the internal Macintosh HD.