My library is empty...why?

Hi, oopsydazy.

Although your iTunes Library display is blank, your song files are probably still on your hard drive.

Have a look at this article in the Apple Knowledge Base for some ideas on how to find them, changing file extensions in the search as is necessary (i.e. .mp3 or .m4a.)

If you find the files,then something is most likely amiss with your iTunes Library files which are needed for iTunes to know the contents of your Music Library and where the files that make it up are located.

We've been receiving many reports of problems such as yours recently and unfortunately we don't know exactly why it's happening.

If you don't have a back-up copy of the .itl file, you will want to have a look at this article in the Apple Knowledge Base.

>Thanks for the help.

You're welcome.

>...will be able to restore all but purchased that was not backed up.

Not that you asked but ...

... although Apple's policy is clear - iTS purchases can be downloaded only once and it is your responsibility to make back-ups - at their discretion they have made one-time exceptions to this policy. You can ask for an exception by submitting the form at the bottom of this page:

http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/store/backup/

Good Luck! But whatever the response from Apple, remember:

Your music is valuable - please back it up!

Help!! I have the same problem. I open up itunes this morning, and my library is completely empty. All my songs, movies, tv shows, and playlists, even the purchased playlists are gone. It's like some one went into my computer and removed all my itunes stuff. However, I do see all of the files in my itunes music folder. But how do I get them back into the library. What do I have to do with my files? I am very frustrated, so if you can help, I'd greatly appreciate it.

I had this problem once. Now I rip all my CDs using WMP and save them to a separate drive which is my master music library. I then migrate the WMP files into Itunes. I also back up the Itunes folder in My music weekly. I have had the library go away more than once and have successfully recovered it each time.

As to songs that you buy from the I store, I burn an audio CD periodically and then rip them into WMP so I have them.

As an aside, now when I migrate to a new computer about every six months I just move the master music disk into the new box and Im off and running.

I got all my stuff back in the library by going to File and going to add folder to itunes. All my stuff got put back into itunes, but I ended up getting doubles, triples, and sometimes quadruples of the same songs. So I have to manually delete the extras. And that's a lot of work when I have 2000+ items in my library.

I just encountered this problem too. At least I'll be able to re-add my music to iTunes.