random iTunes items pointing to the wrong location

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Level 1

18 points

random iTunes items pointing to the wrong location

When syncing my iPhone, I am alerted to the error

"Some of the items in the iTunes library, including "We Can Work It Out", were not copied to the iPhone "Chuck's iPhone" because they cannot be played on this iPhone."

A list of items follows. (I wish I could copy this list to a text file or this was accessible via a log in the console, because then I could copy and paste each item into the iTunes search box for further diagnosis.)

These items are unplayable within iTunes (yet have no exclamation point next to them) and they are found to be pointing to alternate paths. By alternate, I mean that for a specific album, tracks 1 through 10 are playable and exist in an iTunes organized folder, while track 11 is not playable, yet exists in the same folder, but the path displayed for track 11's "get info" box is in some random location different from tracks 1 through 10.

So since there is no exclamation mark on these unplayable tracks, attempting to play them results in nothing, not even the iTunes dialog to locate the file. So how do I induce a relink and make these items playable (and sync-able) again?

MacBook Air, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Mar 2, 2013 12:00 PM

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Answer 1

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ckahn Author

Level 1

18 points

Mar 3, 2013 11:55 AM in response to ckahn

I was able to fix this problem by creating a playlist in iTunes of the damaged files and exporting it to XML and editing the <key>Location</key><string> line pointing to the wrong file location to the right file location, then importing the editing XML playlist back into iTunes and deleting the duplicate items that were pointing to the wrong locations. One edited XML item would not import into iTunes, so I deleted that item in iTunes and re-imported the item manually and gave it the same 4-star rating it had before, although I would be losing the playcount. Perhaps the file path for this item was too long to import successfully.

I hope this doesn't happen again because that was a pain.

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