iTunes 11 deleted all my music and playlists.

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..

Glad to hear you got it sorted out. 🙂

A more recent version of my advice is now in the user tip Empty/corrupt iTunes library after upgrade/crash.

tt2

I have tried what you showed and mine still does not work. It doesn't show any music whatsoever, the update even erased all my music on my ipod. So, when i open iTunes it just says my name from my ipod being plugged in but there is no music no where, everything is just blank?

If the music vanished from your computer and you then let iTunes wipe the data off the iPod then there isn't much left for me to suggest. If you can find the media somewhere I should be able to help your rebuild the library.

tt2

TuringTest2,

Hey! Seems like you've been quite helpful, so I have an issue to share if you don't mind.

i had to manually shut down my PC laptop because it did something odd in the middle of playing iTunes. When I restarted, iTunes was acting brand new like I never used it and it was obviously empty. When I go to the music folder, my stuff is all there but I don't have a recent file in the Previous ITunes media or whatever. The most recent file in there is a year ago. I saw an ItunesLubrary.itl or whatever file when this happened and it had the date that things were last okay but I didn't realize what it was. But now that is overwritten with a date of a few min later after I opened up the empty iTunes again to double-check for my stuff. My concern is that had my playlist info, but it's been wiped out for the blank iTunes info. I have put countless time into my playlists which sorta my DJ collection of music to insanely detailed levels. The .xml file still has the date when things were fine. Can I restore my music and get my playlists somehow someway? I could never redo the playlist sorting.

thanks!

Take a look at the user tip Empty/corrupt iTunes library after upgrade/crash.

Are there any .tmp files in your iTunes folder?

Do you have an iPod/iPhone/iPad that holds any of the playlists?

When did you last upgrade iTunes?

Are you sure you're looking in the active library folder?

The .xml file ought to have been updated when iTunes was opened and closed. Make a backup copy and open it in Notepad/Notepad++ to see if has significant data in it. If it hasn't been corrupted it might be possible to import the file to restore your playlists.

tt2

I checked the User Tip you referred me to. The problem is that I don’t have anything recent in the Previous Itunes Libraries folder. Nothing in there is even from 2014 (and I have a back-up that’s at least more recent than that on my external drive but I’d rather not have to use that ex drive back-up because I use iTunes daily and I will lose a lot with that back-up).

-I do have .tmp files but they also date back to 2013. Nothing even within the year (which I find odd).
-I have an iPod nano that might have ONE of the smaller of my many playlists and there may be one on my phone, but that’s it.
-I can’t recall my last update but I guess a few weeks or months. I’m not sure how to officially check though.
-I’m looking in the active folder as far as I know. It’s the one I’ve always had to go to for iTunes stuff. It’s LIBRARIES > MUSIC > ITUNES. If there is another place to go, I’m clueless on it.

When I open that .xml file in Notepad, it just has some code and random letters and stuff that is completely over my head. I cant tell if it’s significant or not. I’m not that computer savvy.

I still hope you can help. I'm off to work but will definitely check back. Thanks. Losing all this playlist work would be sickening.

To check which library file iTunes is currently opening use the script iTunesITLPath.

When did you make the backup? Can you extract the iTunes Library.itl file from that alone rather than restoring everything? Adding any more recent purchases/downloads/rips from the media folder shouldn't be too hard.

tt2

I can get the ITunes Library.itl file from my back-up but is there a way to use that file with my current iTunes library to where it will read everything (since I haven't lost anything from the iTunes folder where all the songs are) OR do I have to manually add everything since that back-up date? I have a ridiculous amount of music, so I don't know how I would do that because of the way the folders are sorted in the folder?

Sorry but I'm not good with technology. I appreciate you bearing with me.

Simply replace the current .itl (move it elsewhere) with the one extracted from the backup and fire up iTunes. You will have lost any changes to the library since the backup was made but if the backup was taken recently that should be negligible. A scan of the media folder will add in any recently added files.

tt2