I've imported my song library onto my new lap top, but iTunes has not found all the file locations. When I locate a file, iTunes doesn't include the remaining 500+ 'lost' files even though they are all saved in the same location! I don't want to be forced to have to find them all individually! Is there a solution? Please help!
iPod classic 160GB (Late 2009), Windows 10
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. If everything is where it is supposed to be try Repair security permissions for iTunes for Windows.
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. Although it says something like "use the same location" I think it expects to find the tracks in the same artist & album layout they were in previously, with one systematic change to the path.
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.
If you want me to try to provide specific advice please post back the following details:
tt2
Hooray! 😀
tt2
Hi there, again. !
The iTunes help only seemed to function for a short period, but everything's working OK so decided to leave things as they are.
However wondering if you can help me with another problem.
Currently have some playlists I want to convert from aiff to mp3. The problem being when I do so it messes up the iTunes library.
Is there a way I can simply convert a playlist to mp3 and store it separately without effecting the iTunes library ?
Regards, Alex
A playlist is an ordered selection of tracks. You can convert each of the tracks in that playlist into mp3 versions of the same audio, and add those tracks to a new playlist. What do you want to do with the mp3 versions? Does the order matter, or just the selection? By messes up do you mean that after converting you have both copies in the library when you only want one?
One possible approach would be temporarily change the media folder location in iTunes without consolidating your files, perform the conversions, delete the new entries from the iTunes library without sending the files to the trash, and then reset the media folder. It is a little more complicated if you need to save a .m3u file for ordered playback in different software or a non-Apple device.
tt2
I was going to put a mp3 playlist on my android smartphone (not an apple device) by hopefully putting them into a file and then transferring them to the sd card on my phone. Matter of order does not matter. I did some conversions and wondered where the new mp3 playlist was and then realised that there was two copies of certain songs in my iTunes library which was not what I wanted. It then took me some time to sort out and delete all the double entries.
By the sounds of it from what you explained it's not as easy as I thought !
Convert the files, put the library in the songs view, date added order descending so the newly converted mp3 tracks are at the top. Drag and drop them from iTunes to the SD card. Once they have been copied delete the mp3 versions from your library sending to the recycle bin. You library is back as it was before you started and the SD card has mp3 versions of your tracks.
tt2
Thanks. Would never have thought of that !
Will the mp3 music files play OK on my smartphone even though it's not an apple phone ?
Absolutely. 🙂
tt2
Thank you. It worked perfectly. Easy when you know how. I also made sure I restored my import settings back to AIFF. It could be easy to forget !
Regards, Alex
Great stuff. Enjoy the music! 🙂
tt2
Hi There, it's Alex again (not been in touch since Jan) . Hoping you may be able to help me again. Recently restored my library back to iTunes and there's a problem with my playlists. They are show on the left hand side or the iTunes page but when I open them there's no music although the rest of the library seems to have been restored fully. Can you help ?
How did you restore the playlists, and from where? When you export a playlist from iTunes it normally saves them in a way that has each item at a fixed absolute file path. If the files aren't where they need to be on import the playlist name gets added back in, but there are no tracks in the list. This is one reason why I advice keeping the library in the portable layout and backing up in a way that ensures you capture the entire state of the library.
tt2
I do have the portable layout and also have it backed up with synctoy. I accidently deleted part of my library so then restored the iTunes file to an earlier date. The library reappeared intact but most of the playlists although shown were missing the songs that I accidently deleted. Have also restored the library using synctoy but it had no effect.
A shame you didn't ask for help once you noticed you'd done something wrong. The reason I advocate using the preview feature in SyncToy is to determine if files are about to be deleted when you don't want them to be. Unfortunately SyncToy doesn't have any way of turning a proposed delete or overwrite into a reverse restore, deciding what to do needs to be considered carefully and in some cases the SyncToy partnership might need to be recreated after the library has been restored by hand. If you've replicated the deletions in the original library through to the backup then there might still be a possibility of file recovery or undelete tools, or the files could be reclaimed if they exist on any of your devices.
tt2
I did manage to restore the library, I just don't understand why the play lists didn't restore. I also have synctoy set to echo so hopefully the back up library by my understanding should have remained intact.
Using echo should mean the tracks are still there. The core of the library is the .itl database file. Depending on the exact circumstances it won't necessarily reflect the contents of the media folder. Restoring the library file alone won't copy any media files back, even if the restored database has entries for them. When you delete from iTunes files are usually moved to the recycle bin. Did you restore those files? If your hard drive is/was getting full Windows may have discarded some of them automatically.
See Empty/corrupt iTunes library after upgrade/crash for a way to revert to an older version of the database that might include the full playlists. Assuming you get those back in place, but you still have some broken links in the library because you weren't able to recover all of the deleted files you could use the steps in this post Re: exclamation mark to repair broken links in the library by pointing iTunes or my script at the backup versions of the deleted files, then consolidate the library to copy those back into the main media folder.
tt2
Locating files
