I keep getting The song could not be used because the original file could not be found

The "missing file" error 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, one of its parent folders, or 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 click No when asked to try to locate the track. (Due to a bug in iTunes 12 you currently have to say No twice!) 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, a folder renamed, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions. If the difference between the two paths is an additional Music folder in one path then this is a layout issue. I can explain further if that is the case. Either way with both paths I can give further advice.

In some cases iTunes may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps with Get Info but this time click Locate and browse to the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links.

If another application like Windows Media Player has moved/renamed the files then the chances are that subtle differences in naming strategies will make it hard to restore the media to the precise path that iTunes is expecting. In such cases, as long as the missing files can be found somewhere, you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes. See this post for an explanation of how it works.

See also Getting iTunes & Windows Media Player to play nicely.

tt2

Thanks for this! So far, so good!

However, for me this task got a bit more complicated as a bunch of my converted FLAC files (converted to M4A and MPEG) got lost when I recently did a "Consolidate Files" action from the C:/Users/User/Downloads file to the suggested Apple default location (C:\Users\User\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media). As my goal has been to reduce duplicate files, save space, and provide an efficient method for backup to an external hard drive, I sent the files in the old location to the recycling bin (not yet permanently deleted)

This action did not seem to affect the files that were purchased, or ripped from CD...but because (I suspect) those FLAC files had been converted and renamed, I am having a difficult time locating them in their new location. Furthermore, once a single file is painstakingly located, the Apple "would you like to use this location to find other lost files" function does not find anything additional.

So, I could, of course, restore the files from the Recycling Bin to the User/Dowloads file and probably find them all again quickly, but that would defeat my purpose of reducing dupes and having a single location for backup. I could, also, painstakingly locate all of those lost files individually (over 350 of them), but that doesn't seem to be an efficient use of my time. I guess I seek a Silver Bullet method that may not exist....

Thanks for the consideration!

Andy

Consolidating should copy all files located outside of the media folder into it. iTunes shouldn't lose track of anything that it was able to consolidate unless you subsequently moved it.

Can you tell me what iTunes shows in Get Info for a broken track, and what its true path is. Perhaps I can see a way to fix things.

tt2

You are too kind!

So, I manually restored all files from the recycling back to the Users/Downloads file, and then manually moved them to the C:\Users\User\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media file. Then iTunes found all songs immediately.

I probably in sitting on more dupes than I would like, but at least they are found.

I am hoping, in future, that since I enabled iTunes to automatically ad a file to the music library, that I won't have to go through this in the future!

Thanks very much

Andy