Q: The song “XYZ” could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?
Hello everyone. I've searched the web at length about my problem and have found several relevant threads but none that have helped me. I'm now turning here for any ideas.
I have a MacBook Pro Retina 15 inch (late 2013) running OS X El Capitan 10.11.6 and iTunes 12.4.3.1.
I have a large music library (~40K tracks) and all of a sudden, about 3,000 tracks give me the exclamation point with the error message; "The song “XYZ” could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?" None of those tracks have moved in any way. If I manually locate them as prompted, they are right where they should be and can be added no problem. I just don't have the hours that it would take to manually locate 3000 tracks. I'll give a few examples below.
When I look at the broken file's path in iTunes, it reads like so:
file:///Users/Joshua/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Beastie Boys/Solid Gold Hits/15 You Gotta Fight For Your Right (T.mp3
file:///Users/Joshua/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Bon Jovi/Have A Nice Day/13 Who Says You Can't Go Home (Duet.mp3
file:///Users/Joshua/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Grammy Nominees/1998 Grammy Nominees/01 Paula Cole - Where Have All The C.mp3
file:///Users/Joshua/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Am Gold/Am Gold - 1968/14 The Lettermen - Goin' Out Of My H.mp3
The actual file path on the computer is:
/Users/Joshua/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Beastie Boys/Solid Gold Hits/15 You Gotta Fight For Your Right (To Party).mp3
/Users/Joshua/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Grammy Nominees/1998 Grammy Nominees/01 Paula Cole - Where Have All The Cowboys Gone.mp3
/Users/Joshua/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Bon Jovi/Have A Nice Day/13 Who Says You Can't Go Home (Duet With Jennifer Nettles Of Sugarland).mp3
/Users/Joshua/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/AM Gold/AM Gold - 1968/14 The Lettermen - Goin' Out Of My Head.mp3
The paths show that iTunes has cut off the end of the file name which is why I assume they no longer match and work. I haven't found any threads that describe that behavior specifically. What I'm looking for is a quicker way to update the broken links rather than a one by one update. I have tried to restore from older .itl files but was unsuccessful. I'd rather not lose my ratings if at all possible. I migrated my library from a PC and believe everything was fine initially until some update of iTunes. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much in advance.
Posted on Sep 10, 2016 11:34 AM