"song could not be used because the original file could not be found"

If it makes you feel any better, Eric, I am having exactly the same problem and I haven't done anything that would cause certain media to disappear from my iTunes library. All "missing" files are still on my iPhone, iPad, etc.

I have had the mysterious exclamation point issue before, but had been able to locate the missing files somewhere else on my hard drive. This time they are not locatable.

This just happened to me with the dreaded explanation point on my entire iTunes library of 9K+ songs. After combing thru a few responses to the same problem, the light in my head went on - I keep my entire iTunes lisbrary on an external drive for the additional storage capacity and we lost power for a couple hours a few days ago and I now know that that external drive does not go back on without hitting the power button. Voila! Dreaded exclamation points all went away! :-)

I've been getting the same error message for items downloaded from the Itunes stire... but only if they were recent purchases.

What I have done is delete the file then go to my recent purchases and redownload it. This has worked for me.

I am also having the exact some problem. For no explainable reasons (I have not made any changes to my iTunes library) a random assortment of my songs (meaning a few songs on some albums) have the exclamation point when the files are right there where they should be.

When I look at the info for these files, the difference I see is that that path for them has "file:" before it, as though it was a URI. This makes no sense and is what would likely be making the file unable to be located.

Take one of the missing files and look at the URI as listed by iTunes beginning file:// and at the true path of the same file. Post both values here and I can make suggestions as to the easiest way to repair.

tt2

Where is the path names of these files stored? I was thinking that if it is in an XML file I could do a find/replace for occurances of them, right?

Upon closet inspection I can see that the paths that have "file://" are in fact slightly wrong due to a path change of the root directory. The easiest thing would be a bulk text find/replace, either by regexp or even in a text editor like vi.

The paths are stored in the .itl file and cannot be manipulated externally. My script FindTracks should be able to fix the links if you point it at the correct media folder, or if you give me the two paths I can suggest a sequence of steps that would resolve the problem.

tt2

I have it running but it keeps on stopping on AAC Audio files.

The Function ËxtFromKind"needs updating to generate correct the extension for file type: Matched AAC Audio file

Besides that the script works fine.

THanks

I've just updated the script to take account of that media kind description. I don't have iTunes Match myself to test it with, but it should do the trick.

Is there really a capital A on the word "Audio"? If not then I might need to make one further correction, I can't recall if the Select Case routine is case sensitive.

tt2

Okay, the files that are not being found start with this:

file://localhost/Volumes/Medi-ocrity/iTunes_Medi-ocrity/iTunes Media/Music/...

It should be this:

/Volumes/Medi-ocrity/iTunes_Medi-ocrity/iTunes Media/Music/...

The files which are not being found seem downright random. Any ideas on how to clean that up?

Apart from the initial file://localhost bit those two paths appear to be the same, in which case there shouldn't be a problem. Compare the listed and actual paths for a specific broken track. Sometimes the discrepancy is an extra Music folder in one of the two paths.

tt2

I have a similar problem. I have unfortunately used iTunes as a database for my father's 35+ film scores and television music. In the past, I've used an external drive for the audio files since they took up too much space on my MacPro's drive. However, a month or two ago I installed an additional drive in the tower and copied all the music from the external there. I just noticed that iTunes has completely messed up the database so although it "sees" files, there're completely wrong, paths are wrong in some - but not all - cases and entries are missing in others. Getting info and stepping through the "locations" reveals a hodge podge of locations that bears only scant resemblance to the proper locations (on EITHER drive). A complete mess. I have Time Machine backups to April (before the HD installation) and offsite interm backups. I could try removing the new HD from the desktop and using the previous external but it appears that the iTunes database itself has become corrupted. Any suggestions?

John

Time machine to the rescue! I found a (mostly correct) database in my June backup. I replaced the current .itl library with the one from June. I still found a handful music files that were mysteriously remapped to an icon buried deep inside the Package Contents of a derelect copy of Virtual PC (!!??). So the database is now ok but still mapped to my external drive. Is there an elegant way to get the database in iTunes to point to the internal HDD instead of the external drive?

I took tt2's advice and traced where the itunes was filing the missing songs. It was in the trash file. I did not notice any missing songs until after I emptied my trash a few weeks ago. Now I am sure I cannot recover them from this computer.

My question is - why were they in the trash? I never put them there. If I find my complete library in my backup hard drive, and get them back into my itunes, how do I know they will be filed correctly and not filed in trash again? What the heck?

i too have a similar problem, which may have been caused by me allowing file sharing and sharing my itunes library with another computer on my network, which i have now switched off. the result is that it would appear most of my purchased music has retained the correct path name but the older stuff (7000+ files) has the following in front of the path: file://localhost.

Is there a way that I can change these back to what they should be without doing them one at a time which will take for ever ?