Obviously I can't just navigate through my folders on my pc as the missing tracks were put into my iTunes via multiple CDs. How (without re-importing all my CD's) do I relocate all my songs/albums.
Thanks 🙂
Tom
The missing file thing happens if the file is no longer where iTunes expects to find it. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the file, or that the drive it lives on has had a change of drive letter. It is also possible that iTunes has changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout,or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place.
Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to get info, then cancel when asked to try to locate the track. Look on the summary tab for the location that iTunes thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drive(s). Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions.
Alternatively, as long as you can find a location holding the missing files, then you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes.
tt2
They're not on my hard drive as they were put onto my library as CD imports, how do i do it?
Are they somewhere? On an older drive, a backup, or a device? Are you asking for help to identify which tracks are lost? Or are you hoping for some magic way to restore the lost data from the void?
tt2
No need to be rude, I was just wondering if I could in ANY way recover the missing files that I originaly imported from CDs to my itunes library.
It all depends on why they are lost and whether you have any form of backup or device that might hold them. It might help to identify which files are lost to iTunes which you can do with this set of playlists:
Lost & Found playlists
Create a playlist called Found, select everything in Music and drag it into the Found playlist. Create a smart playlist called Lost matching All the rules Playlist is Music and Playlist is not Found. Your lost tracks will be in this playlist.
Follow my instructions from the first post with a single missing file. Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to get info, then cancel when asked to try to locate the track. Look on the summary tab for the location that iTunes thinks the file should be. It will begin file://localhost and end with the filename. Search your entire computer for that filename. If it can be found then where it is might explain why they went missing and how they might be recovered. If it can't be found at all, you could try a few more. Failing that at least you know from the Lost playlist what CDs you need to rerip.
tt2
If the lost media still exists on a device see Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device.
tt2
turingtest2, I have read your following sentence literally 50 times:
"Create a smart playlist called Lost matching All the rules Playlist is Music and Playlist is not Found."
Quite frankly, it appears really obvious that there are some serious punctuation problems in this sentence here, which must be one of the reasons as to why I cannot understand your explanation at all. Also, your explanation is not even remotely detailed whatsoever. I therefore cannot figure out how to actually execute what it is you are explaining.
Let's say for instance iTunes states: "500 of 504 files were found. Files not found will be marked with '!'"
Well if these four missing files happen to not be on that very page {which you are currently looking at}, then obviously you won't see any exclamation marks!! So the question is: "How do you find out WHICH files are the missing files???"
Please be extremely detailed!!
Perhaps an image will clear things up...
Lost is a smart playlist with the rules as shown below:
Found is a regular playlist which you populate by dragging & dropping media from the main Music playlist onto the Found playlist.
An unstated assumption is that the playlists are visible in the left hand sidebar, press CTRL-S to reveal if needed.
When you drag & drop to a playlist iTunes will check every track in the selection, presumably in an attempt to avoid creating duplicates. Any tracks which are not at their expected paths won't be added to the list. Once everything that can be found has been added to the Found playlist the Lost playlist will display what remains missing.
Note that with large libraries iTunes can take a long time to count the selection of tracks as you try to drag them over to the Found playlist. A workaround would be to add in smaller groups, for example sort Songs as Album by Artist, then add all tracks by artists beginning with A, then B, etc.
tt2
You are skipping steps! How in the world did you actually name the smart playlist "Lost"??? I am not even seeing this naming option! I only saw that option present itself in the regular playlist, but not the smart playlist!
I'm posting from an iPad right now so I can't go through the precise steps, but when you create a new smart playlist it will start with one default rule which you can modify using the drop-down boxes or typing into text fields. You need to tap + once to create a second rule. When editing a rule work from left to right. You get to set the playlist name when you've completed the rules and click OK.
tt2
How do I relocate missing songs that were originally put onto my iTunes from a CD?
