iTunes is "loosing" my "original files". WTF?
I'm kind of a newbie to iTunes, and have come across a vexing problem. I've been loading in album after album onto a LaCie firewire drive (where my iTunes folder is) in preparation for loading most of it onto a new iPod. A bunch of the stuff that I loaded yesterday still shows up in the "Library" window, but there's a little exclamation mark to the left of the check box by the title. The error message reads, "The song, ______ could not be used because the original file could not be found" Would you like to find it?" When I click, "yes", it takes me to the music drive, and I navigate through all of the folders to find that the files are right there in the iTunes folder right where they're supposed to be. However, it only lets me "find" one at a time, and it seems to have "lost" over a hundred songs, even though they're right there.
What's going on, and what can I do to fix this?
What's going on, and what can I do to fix this?
Comments
1. It automatically saves a copy of the song in an itunes folder under Music and organizes it depending on name, genre, etc.
2. It just remembers where your music is, so that if you had a music file on the desktop, and open it with itunes without having organization turned on it just remembers that the song is on the Desktop. Next time you click on the song from itunes it tries to go at the file on the desktop
SO, this is how you enable automatic organization with itunes open, go to Preferences (click on the bold iTunes on the top left of the screen) under Advanced select both "keep itunes folder organized" and "copy files to itunes music folder when adding to library." that should solve all your problems. Just means you have to rip everything over again or pull it out of the trash
Originally posted by Chris Fitzgerald
what can I do to fix this?
straight to the point....
In the Finder, highlight the songs that aren't showing up in iTunes.
Double-click to open all highlighted files.
This should make iTunes open all of them and you should now have TWO copies of each song in your iTunes library - one with an exclamation point and one without.
Delete the library listing for each song that has the exclamation point and you're fine.
The above is quicker, easier, and safer than any alternatives, including mucking around with your iTunes prefs at the risk of losing the link to all the other music on the LaCie drive.
Been there, done that, trust me!
Originally posted by FormerLurker
straight to the point....
In the Finder, highlight the songs that aren't showing up in iTunes.
Double-click to open all highlighted files.
This should make iTunes open all of them and you should now have TWO copies of each song in your iTunes library - one with an exclamation point and one without.
Delete the library listing for each song that has the exclamation point and you're fine.
The above is quicker, easier, and safer than any alternatives, including mucking around with your iTunes prefs at the risk of losing the link to all the other music on the LaCie drive.
Been there, done that, trust me!
or you could delete your whole music library in itunes and then just drag your music folder back onto itunes so it has the current location of them all.
dictionaries don't dictate, they register hehe
but we are getting totally of topic here and formerlurker gave a good solution, maybe a lock on this now
Originally posted by tonton
Chris, your writing style is fine, but you along with too many other people in America should really learn how to spell the words "lose" and "losing" and "loser". I think that there must actually be a large number of teachers out there who don't know how to spell these words correctly. It's a sad statement on the current state of American education. Or maybe it's just that computers and television have further replaced books on our list of idle time activities.
READ MORE, AMERICA!!!!
It's called a typo. You can fix them in the body of vBulletin posts, but once there's one in the title of a thread, only a mod can fix it. Thanks for your concern, though...
I have done the find workaround now several times and I am still losing files.
WTF?
iBug
Media files collections, such as music, video, images and photos, often become the primary source of identical files for iTunes. If you have a music collection of several hundreds or even thousands mp3-files, you may want to sort them by deleting identical tracks. With Duplicate File Finder you can organize your media files and increase free disk space needed to enlarge your collection.