Moving iTunes Library

Open iTunes, choose to organize the library, right-click any song in iTunes, show it in the Windows Explorer, and navigate up to the iTunes folder. Copy that as a whole.

If it contains rented movies, those won’t play on a different computer.

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You copy the entire iTunes library, including its database files; all of these will be in the folder with the iTunes Library.itl file. If you choose to move over only the music, the playlists and other metadata won’t be transferred, and you’ll need to manually import it into iTunes.

(125710)

Yes. If you haven’t previously organized the iTunes library, do so before transferring it.

(125713)

I am in the exact same situation in that I want to move iTunes music from my Dell Studio/Vista to new Mac Pro. Not great with this stuff so let me show you what I see so I can help you understand. iTunes >Album Artwork>iTunes Music>Mobile Applications>Previous iTunes Libraries>Playlists. Please walk me through the steps for transferring my music to my Seagate external drive and then to my new Mac Book. Thanks. Don't forget, Not Good at this stuff so more explaining is better than less.

Take a look at Make a split library portable. As long as the library is in the shape on the right you can copy the entire iTunes folder from one machine to the other, by way of an intermediary copy on an external drive or over a network, and everything should work. From the look of things your library could do with a little preparation first.

tt2

You've mixed up several different procedures:

• changing the iTunes Media folder location setting in Edit > Preferences > Advanced does not tell iTunes where your media is located, only where new media is to be put and what folders to use if consolidating a library.
• using File > Add Folder to Library... only copies media into your library - this does nothing with respect to playlists, ratings, etc.

You need to follow the steps in tt2's user tip on Make a split library portable to copy the complete library.

When you say "I want to be able to share my music with other user accounts" do you mean that you want the complete library, including playlists, etc., to be available to different users, or for each user to have separate playlists that reference a shared collection of media files? The former is easier to manage - move the complete library to the Public folders, i.e., C:\Users\Public\Music\iTunes where that folder has a structure like this:

and the iTunes Library.itl file is the one copied from your previous library. Then, in each user account, hold down SHIFT while starting iTunes and when you see this prompt:

click on Choose Library..., navigate to C:\Users\Public\Music\iTunes and select the iTunes Library.itl file in that folder.

One thing to note with this approach: only one user can be using iTunes at a time, so it is a good idea to disable fast user switching in Windows to prevent this.

If you want to have each user having separate playlists but shared media then each user account will need a separate iTunes Library.itl file ... though I'm not sure of the merits of this as users will not be able to see any additions to the media folders made by users, and may end up with inconsistencies if other users make changes to the shared media.

If starting the transfer over again is too complicated then as long as you have all of the media and the .itl file that has all of the playlists you could put everything in the correct layout (see images above or Make a split library portable) and then use my FindTracks script to repair the broken links.

tt2

A possible rule of thumb is that you never move media by hand unless it is already inside a portable library folder and you are moving the library as a whole.

The easiest way to get from where you are now to where you want to be might be this:

1. Copy iTunes folder to the root of the external drive, e.g. as E:\iTunes. (You can adjust the drive letters if my guess is wrong).
2. Shift-start iTunes and connect to the new copy of the database at E:\iTunes\iTunes Library.itl.
3. Check that the media plays.
4. Under Edit > Preferences > Advanced click the reset button for the media folder, or manually change the path to E:\iTunes\iTunes Media.
5. If iTunes offers to consolidate the library say no.
6. Now go to File > Library > Organize Library... and tick both Consolidate Files and Rearrange Files or the first only if the second option is greyed out. Click OK.
7. When all files have been copied the iTunes folder on the external drive is a portable version of your library.

OS cannot natively write to NTFS drives, but it can read them. If your external drive is in NTFS format you need to copy the library to another drive when you get it to the Mac. You can either copy the iTunes folder into the default User > Music folder replacing what is there, or place it elsewhere and option-start-iTunes to connect to it on some other path.

Note: In Windows if you paste one folder into a location where there is an existing folder of the same name, then Windows Explorer will offer to merge the contents of the two folders. On OSX the new folder simply replaces the older one discarding all of the contents.

tt2

You could go through the steps of making the library portable on the PC, then copy it to the external drive, which also means starting over to some extent. If your media folder is iTunes standard layout and has already been copied to the portable drive then there are possibilities for optimising the number of files that have to be copied, but they take a good deal of explaining and there is scope for it to go wrong which is why I've suggested an easier route.

The library is a list of references to the media. When you clone the library files to a new folder it should remain connected to the media.

The reset button should create the necessary folder and change the setting to point to it.

tt2