iTunes 11 deleted all my music and playlists.

You're welcome. 🙂

See make a split library portableto get iTunes connected to the library files on the external. Since it used to work it should just be a matter of copying the library files from C: back into F:\iTunes and then shift-starting iTunes to connect to the correct library.

See this Backup Tip for a backup method.

tt2

Hi there!

I am also having the same problem as these guys. My whole library wasn't deleted, but a majority of my songs (only downloaded from cds, not iTunes) and my playlists are empty. I have a mac so the diagram was confusing to me. Is there anyway you could help? Thank you!

Olivia

I also need this EXTREMELY simplified.

Hi turingtest2,

I'm wondering if you could help me. Every song I play in Itunes gets deleted after I have played it from my Itunes library. It originally showed up an error message saying something like it will delete the next 20 songs from the next playlist if i played the song. I hope you can help me.

Many Thanks in advance,

Chrysanthyum

I'm having the same issue, itunes updated and ALL of my music is gone, I had it directed to my external harddrive and now the folders are there but not the files. There is only one library file, so I can't try that way and there are no ".mp3/.mp4" files on my computer at all.

Me too--same problem as ajg2118. I don't have a Previous iTunes Library folder and my whole library and playlists are gone... 😟

Ditto here as I mentioned on another thread. Files 100% gone. I don't see any way of getting them back--there are no files to re-name. The only hope is that iTunes was keeping my music in the cloud someplace. But if not, I'm SOL. I wish I knew what caused this to happen. I don't have AVG.

My wife has an iPad which she regularly updates on one of my 2 computers. Last time she did this, all of her books were transferred to my music file folder. She's updated her iPad frequently on this one computer--but what caused it to do this switch--how was her separate account confused with my iTunes account? And further, if this was the cause, how did what she did affect the *other* computer? Why was the music on an entirely different computer deleted as well?

My playlists are all empty and this trick no longer works in iTunes 11.1.3, I'm getting this message when copying and renaming a previous library:

[I made a post yesterday - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5535663]

Works fine for me... I've just restored a test library back to its most recent previous version from 2013-10-28. 😕

tt2

Thank you for your post, and of course I am grateful to misguidedxgh0st for posting the question in the first place. Your solution worked for my Macbook Pro. I had been suffering in silence, having had ALL of my burned tracks, and Playlists, go "bye-bye" with an iTunes update. (With the update, I could only play iTunes purchases - and ONLY when connected to the internet.) All is well with your solution.

As a Yoga Instructor, hours and hours had gone into Playlists, to create the right music for a Vintayas Flow class. As everyone knows, hours also go into buring tracks from CDs. I am glad I finally did a Google search for "iTunes deleted all of my music and playlists." Thanks again. You're my hero!

You're welcome. 🙂

tt2

I have the same problem, and renaming the old library doesn't help!

Because there are no mp3 files anymore in the filesystem, but just the empty folders with Artist and Albums.

On Itunes I can see the missing tracks and when I try to play them there is an esclamation point, and it says that can't find the original file.

I noticed that when I click on information, on the missing song on itunes, it gives me the path where the file is located, it says Position: file://localhost/Users/username/.trash/songname.mp3

it means that the file should be in the trash right? but I emptyed the trash several times so what can I do?

Is there any good free data recovery for mac? I just tried one but when it finds the files they are not named as before and i can't recognise them!

Sorry I missed this when first posted. 😐

If the recovery program finds anything useful then iTunes should be able to make sense of the metadata inside the files even if the file & folder names cannot be restored properly.

Otherwise see Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device.

tt2

turingtest2 - thanks so much for this! Relieved a lot of stress for me... 543 songs in my playlist and it randomly deleted it from iTunes just cos I unselected it from the synced music to my iPhone.. Ridiculous!

okay EVERYONE with this problem. After 2 hrs on the phone with apple support and NO HELP it was a combination of turingtest2's first post on page one of this forum and my own twisting and turning that I figured it out.

Im posting because I am an artist, radio dj, and manage a label- So I was ready to kill someone when vamous,, all my playlists music etc up and vanished..

When itunes11 updates check:

itunes>

preferences>

advanced>

(it will show you the location it is pulling from for your library)

In that folder it will display "itunes library.itl" < that guy is probably showing a size of KB...

So what turingtest2 reccomended (on the first page of this forum) was to label that file as "itunes library (corrupt).itl" and to in your finder search "previous itunes libraries" and in that folder you will see probably several other "itunes library (and the date here).itl"s

You would then want to copy the most recent dated "itunes library (date here).itl" paste it in the location your itunes is pulling from and rename it "itunes library.itl" (aka take the date out)..

So i did that and it wasn't working....

It was changing what I was pasting in, back to the "itunes library (corrupt).itl KB size file...

Until I just deleted the "itunes library (Corrupt).itl" >

Once I deleted that and pasted in the "previous itunes libraries"s "itunes library (date here).itl" and took out the date.. It worked.

Long story short, just delete that "itunes library.itl" its pulling from>

Copy the most recent dated "itunes library (date here).itl" paste it in the location your itunes is pulling from and rename it "itunes library.itl" (aka take the date out)..

Hope this helps.. im not tech savy at all and apparently neither were the ppl at itunes and the 5 specialists I went through until I FIXED THE PROBLEM with the help of turingtest2 so thank you to him/her whoever they are...

if you are still just confused.. look at turingtest2 's post with pictures on page 1 of this forum and what i wrote should make sense..