How to delete duplicates in 5 minutes, any version

Do you want a magic wand? Read this entirely before you start using my magic wand: Open your music folder, select iTunes, then iTunes Media folder, then Music folder there. Open each artist folder and copy the song files only to another folder of your choosing elsewhere on your computer, do this one artist at a time or you can get windows to do it, but you can look how to do that up. You need to have all music in ONE FOLDER, no sub-folders, you can use several methods but the quickest is to open a fold press control A then control c and then with the destination for the copies opened already press control V. These commands are select all, copy, and paste respectively. I would move the files since it can cause administrator privilege problems. Once all music is in another folder with no sub-folders, just the music files press control F to open find. type in (1).mp3 or (1).m4a or whichever file extension the music is (there are 8: .mp3 , .m4a , .m4v , .wma are the main ones. Anyway, once you type in (1).m4a all duplicates will be highlighted. Hit delete.

Congratulations. You have now deleted every duplicate are in the library. Every single one, because windows add (#). to any duplicate file o any kind in windows. ANYTHING. The number depends on how many duplicates have been added, for example (1).m4a (2).m4a (3).m4a....etc. You can do this for every file extension type, such as (1).mp3 then (1)m4a to be safe or you can just type (1). by itself and get all fill types. I don't recommend because it can accidentally delete things you don't want to. The best way is to hit control F then enter (1).m which will select all the music files with the exception of windows media music which is .wma. For all duplicates i would search for number (1) (2) and (3). If you have more than three duplicates you can connect the dots on how to find the rest.

Any how, then go back to iTunes, select all songs, (control A) hit delete and move to recycle bin. I would delete from cloud too, but that's up to you. I do this because i have iTunes match and it will automatically add to iCloud when i hit update iTunes match. MAKE SURE THAT IN PREFERENCES UNDER the EDIT menu list on the menu bar, you have set iTunes to auto organize your library and auto copy files to the iTunes library before you add the files back. Click menu, add file, then select all the files in whatever folder you copied the music to, don't just add folder because it can create errors. Use the add file then open the folder and press control A to select all then enter.

You are done. No duplicates, no program needed, no spyware or malware or any other crap. Simply put, this whole process takes about 10 minutes, maybe 15 on a reasonably fast machine. It depends on your hard type, chipset speed, processor, and how big your library is. I did it using a 6 core 3.8 ghz 64bit system to a 750gb solid state drive @ 3.0gbs sata setting. It took about 6 minutes total. One last thing, if you have previously deleted the ORIGINAL file then you will delete your current copy because it will be the duplicate not the original, easy way to prevent is to save the file you original copied the music files only to as a back up on another hard drive or server or another folder, just to be safe.

Problem solved.