Itunes 11 deleted ALL my music!

This worked for me. Thank you sooooo much!!!

As shared by bluedevils1148

bluedevils1148

EVERYONE READ THIS IT WORKS. When you click to open up iTunes, HOLD DOWN SHIFT. You'll have the option to choose which library to open, and your old ones will be saved to your computer. Your newer songs not on the older library will be there.

Same issue here. For me I'd done an iTunes update a while ago and had been listening to music since then just fine. Last week AVG (my antivirus) did an update. Apparently, antivirus updates will sometimes create an empty library file for some reason. This is what caused me to open iTunes today and find nothing in my library. To fix this I just followed the directions at support.apple.com/kb/TS1967 to get my library back to where it was at the time of my iTunes update. Fortunately, everything I'd added since then (3 months ago) was purchased through iTunes so I just logged into my account and re-downloaded all of my purchaces since then. Hope this helps!

Either we are doing something (I deleted a podcast episode and it deleted the entire podcast feed) or iTunes is and in the process, it's moving everything into the trash.

This is simply unexcusable.

I recommend that we keep track of the recent or the the last action that we did (was it deleting a file or did you recently delete a song or podcast?) before all the files end up in the trash.

I have reported this bug to the iTunes team and it is reported fixed in iTunes 11.0.3.

1. Select a podcast episode in a playlist that you want to delete.

2. Right click on it and choose "Show in Playlist", "Podcasts".

3. Press the delete or backspace key.

Results: the entire podcast feed, all individual songs and metadata for that podcast are deleted. The wrong item has focus. The podcast feed has focus while it is expected that the song has focus.

Expected: The podcast episode should have focus and should be deleted.

This is a critical data loss bug and the product should never have shipped with something like this in it.

Affter this experience, since I am a USER, not an Apple employee, and since 11.0.3 is not available on my preferred OS (10.6.8), I can not and will not test this. This issue has wasted too much of my time and money as it is and iTunes 11 is simply flat out ugly compared to iTunes 10.7. Even under Mac OS 10.8.2, I will not use this product based on my initial experience with it. It just doesn't work. Once bitten…

I tried this, and it failed to restore my library. Maybe this is because my last 'good' library file is 1. almost 6 months old, and 2. Dates back to the last version of iTunes 10.

There is no excuse for why this is happening, other than some lousy programming over at Apple. I had a router that had flawed software, and it took them over 6 months to fix it. Change for the sake of change is rarely good.

Last night, I finally found an old library file that did load when I used the SHIFT button. So I loaded it, added as much music as I could find between that old save and today, updated my iPod, and went to bed.

Just now, when I restarted the computer and opened iTunes, guess what? Wiped clean again. And the old library file I loaded? Gone.

Tootht, when this happens, please report which type of computer you have, which OS it is running and the version of iTunes so we can help other people with this info.

Windows?

Look in your trash/recycle bin.

Alex,

I have reported these things. Previously in this thread. When you asked me to.

There is stuff in my recycle bin, but they are NOT the library file I lost last night. These are all iTunes files that contain virtually no data. The library file I loaded last night was much larger than what's in the recycle bin. (every time I try to type in the file size, my keyboard stops working) onepointsix mb.

I'm in the middle of a move and don't have time to check up on your system's config by looking back through the thread.

It's also standard practice to state the specifications of your system (OS, product, version#) each time you run in to a problem.

I used to do QA professionally, and this simply saves the time of the people who are trying to help you or are researching the problem. When you type that you have a problem, you always list the specs of the system you are having the problem on. What if you had more than one computer with different versions of the product on them? Know what I mean?

I had a strange experience with Itunes 11.02. I purchased a George Strait single in the Itunes store. After it downloaded all of my George Strait CD's in the Itunes library vanished. 2 hours later, my entire library was gone. All I had left was purchased music in the Icloud. I found an Itunes folder on the external hard drive. Some of the music was in that folder. You could play the music out of that folder and it would download into Itunes and play. I am very confused. For some reason Itunes 11 is dumping data files in the recycle bin. All of my music is backed up on external hard drives, so it wasn't a huge problem. I was tired of pulling my hair out with Itunes 11. It would not recognize my 2nd gen Ipod. I downgraded to Itunes 10.7. Itunes 11 was also making a mess in the library. It would not put albums together. I am sending a message to Apple. You have some work to do on Itunes 11. It has serious bugs. I know I did not delete my library, the only thing I did was log into Itunes and surprise, my library is gone. I never found my George Strait CD's.

OK, so you're on Windows. This looks similar to tootht's problem.

You should have a receipt for the songs you ordered in an email. Since you reverted to 10.7, you should be able to do a "Check for Purchases" in one of the iTunes menus.

Good luck.

That does help me find the purchased items from the Itunes Store. The last thing I wanted to do was downgrade to Itunes 10.7. Now can someone tell me what is wrong with Itunes 11.02 and why it is erasing entire libraries. When Apple gets the bugs worked out, I might think about trying it again. I got tired of reloading CD's just to have them erased again.

Why are you still using the application that deleted your entire library! Downgrade unless you want to see how long it will take for it to happen again.

How much is your time worth?

The first time my library vanished, I was using iTunes 10.7. On Windows 7.

Don't know what to tell you. I've never had that problem on the Mac - until iTunes 11.

Itunes worked perfectly this afternoon. I wake up my computer 30 minutes ago and itunes 11 has erased my entire library. LIVID!!! I have windows 8 and had been very happy using itunes for the last two months since getting a new laptop and now will need to spend an entire afternoon redoing my library. There was no error message, I just opened itunes and my library was gone with several of the itunes library database files inexplicably in my recycle bin. Why did this happen apple?

I also added music within the past week and there were no .tmp files in my music folder and now all of a sudden there are approximately 30 of them. Why is this apple?