All of a sudden, a "!" has appeared in front of a lot of my iTunes songs and it says that the original cannot be found. What happened? And what do I do now?

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Level 1

13 points

All of a sudden, a "!" has appeared in front of a lot of my iTunes songs and it says that the original cannot be found. What happened? And what do I do now?

A week ago, I was burning CDs, no problem. This week, I tried to burn a CD from the same playlist, but all of the songs now have a "!" in front of the title. When I click on it, it says that the original cannot be found. More and more of the songs are having this same "!" showing up. What happened? And how do I get the music back? There are thousands of songs with this "!"!!!!! And, I'm a music teacher, so this is my life!

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8), also have iMovie and iDVD

Posted on Jan 23, 2013 5:15 PM

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Answer 1

Jan 23, 2013 7:05 PM in response to iteachmusic

The ! Means that the link is broken between what is shown in the Library and where the file is located. You will need to relink the items. You can search you HD to see where the files are located then use CMD-O to relink.

Did you move any items using the Finder?

iTunes is a data base manager and if you move items outside of the iTunes interface then iTunes might not keep track/find the move.

You might find a script here to relink the tracks with ! - http://dougscripts.com/itunes/

MJ

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Answer 2

iteachmusic Author

Level 1

13 points

Jan 23, 2013 7:17 PM in response to Mike Johnson12

As far as I know, nothing has been moved using the Finder.

It started out with just a few songs having the ! but now, more and more are showing up with it.

I have an external hard drive, which has never been disconnected, but now, it doesn't show up on the Finder.

I'm not sure I know how to do what you are recommending; can you give me specific steps to try?

Thanks so much for offering to help!

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Answer 3

Jan 23, 2013 7:20 PM in response to iteachmusic

Is your iTunes on an external drive?

If so and the HD is not showing then unplug the HD then plug back in to get the HD to show in the Finder. Restart iTunes and see if the ! go away.

MJ

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