HT204668: Locate and organize your iTunes media files
Learn about Locate and organize your iTunes media files
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Helpful answers
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Mar 4, 2016 10:28 AM in response to goheelsm3by turingtest2,iTunes may create duplicates if the same content is repeatedly added from outside the media folder when it is set to make copies of anything that is added to the library, or is added from an external drive that hosts the media folder that was offline when iTunes was launched.
Apple's official advice on duplicates is here: Find and remove duplicate items in your iTunes library. It is a manual process and the article fails to explain some of the potential pitfalls such as lost ratings and playlist membership, or that sometimes the same file can be represented by multiple entries in the library and that deleting one and recycling the file will break any others.
Use Shift > View > Show Exact Duplicate Items to display duplicates as this is normally a more useful selection. You need to manually select all but one of each group to remove. Sorting the list by Date Added may make it easier to select the appropriate tracks, however this works best when performed immediately after the dupes have been created. If you have multiple entries in iTunes connected to the same file on the hard drive then don't send to the recycle bin.
Use my DeDuper script (Windows only) if you're not sure, don't want to do it by hand, or want to preserve ratings, play counts and playlist membership. See this thread for background, this post for detailed instructions, and please take note of the warning to backup your library before deduping.
(If you don't see the menu bar press ALT to show it temporarily or CTRL+B to keep it displayed.)
The most recent version of the script can tidy dead links as long as there is at least one live duplicate to merge stats and playlist membership to, and should cope sensibly when the same file has been added via multiple paths.
tt2
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Mar 4, 2016 11:45 AM in response to turingtest2by goheelsm3,I will try that but overall I am wondering why my library states that all songs and artists are present but it will only sync half. This was a ton of work 4 years ago to load all of these CDs over years into my library and that poor computer finally died (great computer but Windows XP) and since I have never been able to move it all and build onto it.
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Mar 4, 2016 11:51 AM in response to goheelsm3by turingtest2,If you have duplicate entries that point to the same tracks then as one is synced it can replace the other. This can lead to a situation where lots of files are copied each time you sync, but nothing actually changes on the device. Tracks that cannot be played from the library because they show with the exclamation mark of a broken link may be left on a device if already there, but cannot be added if they are not. Unchecked tracks are normally excluded from syncing. Without a bit more detail it is hard to know for certain what is going on, but I'd recommend backing up and then deduping the library as a starting point.
tt2