itunes cannot locate music in my library

You're welcome. 🙂

Don't neglect this one. Backup your iTunes for Windows library with SyncToy.

tt2

Success!! I followed your suggestion to insert the memory stick and open up iTunes and do the File>Library>Organize>Library>Consolidate Files steps. However when I opened up the playlist with the most missing songs, I still saw the same broken songs!! Even though I was disappointed, I clicked on the broken song and clicked Ctrl + I to see where the file was being stored at that moment. But when I did that, the song updated and was complete!! I just continued scrolling through the songs using the arrows at the bottom of the File tab and every song updated and is stored where it was supposed to be!! Thanks so much for your help!!!

Vanessa

You're welcome. 🙂

tt2

turingtest2,

While I, too, have the issue of iTunes not finding my music files with the same error pop-up as those writing above, in my case it appears when I moved my iTunes library from my old PC to my new one (both using Windows 7 professional), somehow all the file names were changed by the addition of a tilde (~) and a random set of 8 capital letters and numbers on the end of each file name after the extension (example 01 xyz.m4a~ABCD1E2F). Once I remove the extra junk from the file extension iTunes (and Windows file explorer) recognizes the file as an iTunes music file.

So, how do I fix all the file names for 900 songs without doing it manually one at a time?. Oh, and in iTunes, once I fix the file I have 2 entries for each song, one that looks right and one with the exclamation point on the front. But those are fairly easy to select and delete if it comes to that.

Thanks,

-Jay

Hi.

I should be able to cook up a script for cleaning those up. Bear with me. I have an existing script called DeDuper that can clean up the live vs. broken links.

tt2

That script is ready for you now at http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/FixExts.vbs

See my main scripts page for advice on downloading and executing if needed.

tt2

The FixExts script will start by prompting you to confirm the location of your media folder. It will then look at each file in that folder, and if there is a tilde within the file extension only, it will remove the tilde and any characters that follow. It then recursively processes each subfolder within the starting folder. Finally it will tell you how many folders were searched and how many extensions were repaired.

tt2

turingtest2,

Thank you for the quick response, but I ran into a snag. I downloaded the script and just double-clicked the script to run it, expecting it to ask what folder my media is in, which it did. I copy/pasted a new path to folder for just a specific artist/album and let it go. But I got an error:

Script: C:\Users\yadayadayada\IFxExits.vbs

Line: 125

Char 3

Error: Object required: 'PB'

Code: 800A01A8

Source: Microsoft VBScript runtime error

???

Ah, I forgot to test it with the progress bar disabled. I've just uploaded a new build.

tt2

Success!

Without checking every single file on my PC, but just spot checking a few folders/albums, it looks to have worked like a charm. When I clicked on a song in iTunes, it said it couldn't locate the file, but once I navigated a path to it and clicked OK to find all the others it wanted to try to find, all appears to have been successfully found and linked properly to iTunes. And, there were no duplicate entries with exclamation markes under each album as I found when I manually fixed the individual file names, so I don't have a bunch of songs "!" in front to delete.

Very cool. 😎 You're a wonder whiz!

-J

Excellent news. 🙂

If I haven't dropped a link already into this thread see Backup your iTunes for Windows library with SyncToy to make sure you don't get caught out again.

tt2

TT2,

I moved my iTunes library, I am on a MAC, to an external hard drive. Local hard drive has no more room on it so I am out of luck there. I have manually located about 600 of the songs, but as you know it takes time. I want to try other options of locating them but I have been hesitant as I do not want to lose my playlists that I created as I have a bunch of them. iTunes can not locate 3,100 of the songs despite being in the same folder as the rest. Aside from manually finding each song do you have any suggestions?

If you can free up enough room to temporarily move the content back where it came from iTunes should be able to pick up the tracks again. You could then consolidate to your new location, and delete the originals to recover the space on the system drive.

The iTunes self-repair mechanism may only work well if the media is in the standard layout within the designated media folder.

See also Make a split library portable for some background on the ideal layout for your library. Depending on what you have moved where it might be possible to move the library files from the system drive to the external and place everything in the correct relative locations so that it appears as if you had moved the library as a consistent whole.

tt2

I'm having similar problem I've moved my music from old PC win 7 to new win 8 PC but it will not show in iTunes, any suggestions would be appreciated.

I have read through this thread, and tried all of the solutions, but nothing seems to work. I transferred my music to a new PC. The older computer is no longer available. All my purchased music had an exclamation mark. It asks me to locate the song. When I look at the file path for the songs that can't be located, and then search for that path, it says the file cannot be located. I tried transferring the music from my iPad. This does not work either. Any suggestions?