Show duplicates in ITunes 11?

Not exclusively. A lot of Windows users have itunes. 😉

tt2

for windows users there is TuneUp

http://download.cnet.com/TuneUp/3000-2141_4-10863201.html

you are an itunes hero. thank you for the help sir! _virtual handshake_ have a great day!!

Thanks for the suggestion, but I have a strong opposition to having to use a third party product (particularly not free) to do something I could do before (for free). Right now, my main option is to go back to iTunes 10 and hope that my voice and others will be heard to bring back this feature. As I also have other issues with iTunes 11 (very slow search response, not happy with the UI changes, amoungst other peeves). Thanks all.

Hi - I too am frustrated by this and some other software issues (such as the March/April 2013 calendar bug which still needs fixing). Please register your comments on the Apple product Feedback pages; enough complaints via Feedback and they might do something about it. I am using an old PC, but with a brand new iphone 5 and ipad 4. Many of my tunes were duplicated when I tried to put all my music from a variety of sources such as Windows media player into itunes. I was only half way through eradicating duplicates and freeing up the valuable space they consume when I updated to itunes 11, so the removal of the Show Duplicates feature is annoying.

JCav75 wrote:

you are an itunes hero. thank you for the help sir! _virtual handshake_ have a great day!!

You're welcome. 🙂

tt2

The problem with the TuneUp (which I have and use) DeDuper feature (and every other Windows de-duping script I've found) is that they are intended for finding and deleting duplicate files. I have long since cleaned up my duplicate files.

What the built-in duplicate function of iTunes uniquely did is make it extremely easy to find and delete duplicate entries in playlists... for example: my '70s playlist (which has over 800 songs in it) might end up with multiple copies of Springsteen's Born to Run in it... (from Born to Run, Born to Run 35th Anniv, Greatest Hits, Essentials, etc), NONE of those is a duplicate file as I collect complete albums and would not ever wish to delete any of them from the library. However, I only want one of them in the playlist. Prior to iTunes 11, with just two clicks while viewing a playlist I could check for such duplicates and, if found, delete them from the playlist only.

Nothing else I've found can replace that functionality. The closest I've found is Steve MacGuires "Duplicates" script... but this only creates a new playlist that includes all of the duplicates it found in the original playlist... it does nothing to help actually remove the duplicate items in the original playlist.

Hi Joe,

Would you be interested in a script which eliminated repeat copies of the same Artist & Song from a playlist?

tt2 (aka Steve MacGuire)

That would absolutely be helpful... but I guess my bigger problem (than the current script finding duplicates based on title only) is that, while it can be helpful to identify that the duplicates exist, it does not eliminate the need to go back to the original list and manually pick out the dupes and delete them. Or am I missing something in how your script works?

Thanks, BTW, for your great contributions to the Windows side of the iTunes world!

Duplicates and Exact Duplicates are a (hopefully short term) replacement for the missing features in iTunes 11.0. I also have a script called DeDuper which actively eliminates all but one copy of each exact duplicate set from the library. Since writing that I've become aware of the ability to include the exact same track in a playlist and worse the potential to have the same file added to iTunes from completely different paths. The existing DeDuper script doesn't handle either of those scenarios well. I've started work on a new version but there are many calls on my time. I was however thinking about a script specifically to tidy exact duplicates (specifically same track object) out of regular playlists. These would by definition have exactly the same track name, artist, album, disc no. & track no. The normal duplicates list just matches on track name but even when different artists record the same song these are clearly different, as opposed to when the same song by the same artist appears on multple albums. It woud be feasible to rework one of my recent scripts to identify duplicate artist-songs and eliminate all but one of them from the source playlist.

tt2

The Mossberg article in the Wall Street Journal said that the Find Duplicates function will be back soon with a minor update. Good news!! Maybe Apple listened!!

hilarious if that would be true :-)

I keep getting a Windows Script Host when trying to run Exact Duplicates. The error popup says it's in line 268, Char 3, Unspecified error, code 80004005, and source (null). Any idea how I can fix this?

Hiya, what have you got selected in iTunes when you run the script? What view of the library is showing? If no tracks are selected it should process the entire library. If some tracks are selected it should process those.

tt2

Proof of concept in DuplicateSong&Artist which will create a new playlist of the songs with the same song name & artist. Will post a script that cleans the source playlist instead (keeping one of each repeat) as soon as I can.

tt2