How do I put all the songs from a compilation album into the same /album/folder in Itunes v12

Select all the tracks that are part of the compilation, right-click > Get Info. Then you can either:

• Check the "Album is a compilation of songs by various artists" box, or
• Set the Album Artist value to "Various Artists" (or similar).

Functionally the result is the same, i.e., all tracks collected in the correct album. The differences are how the resulting album is sorted and where the media is stored (if you've set iTunes to organize your media folders).

• When the "Album is a compilation ..." flag is checked then all such albums will appear at the end of any listing sorted by artist, and the media will be stored in (by default) C:\Users\user_name\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Compilations\album_name
• If you set the Album Artist value to "Various Artists" then such albums will appear as part of the regular sort order*, and the media will be stored in C:\Users\user_name\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Various Artists\album_name.

You can set the "Album is a compilation ..." flag and set the Album Artist value - in this case the behavior associated with the flag takes precedence.

* i.e., will appear along with other albums whose artist's name starts with "V" ... in my case all Various Artists compilations (I don't use the "Album is a compilation ..." flag at all) appear after Van der Graaf Generator and before Suzanne Vega (sorted as "Vega, Suzanne"). You can modify this by setting the Sort Album Artist to a different value - I use this for classical recordings where I sort by composer rather than performer, so for an album containing several works by JS Bach performed by different ensembles I'll set the metadata fields as follows:

• Artist: the correct ensemble/conductor/soloists for each item (so this value is not common to all tracks in the album)
• Album Artist: "Various Artists"
• Sort Album Artist: "Bach, J.S."

I don't see your screenshot 😟 but I assume you're starting with something like this, i.e., the compilation split into multiple albums:

If you select all the items that you want to be in a single album, right-click > Get Info you'll see this:

As you say, in iTunes 12 you don't see a field to enter a distinct Album Artist value. You can, however, address this by clicking the Add Field button and selecting Album Artist:

That makes the field available in the metadata dialog so that you can enter the required value:

You can also show the pre-iTunes 12 version of the dialog by holding the SHIFT key when selecting Get Info - this allows you to enter the Album Artist directly:

Generally setting a common Album title and Album Artist will fix split albums. For compilations of tracks by different artists set the album artist to Various Artists and also set Part of a compilation to Yes on the Options tab if using the old dialog box or tick Album is a compilation of songs by various artists if using the new one.

For deeper problems see Grouping tracks into albums.

tt2