Playing music from an external hard drive through Itunes on my laptop computer.

I have a laptop computer with a 100 GB hard-drive. I have my music files on an external hard drive. I don't want to copy the music files to the laptop because the laptop drive's capacity is too small. I can't figure out how to configure Itunes to look to the external drive for the music files. I've tried to change the location of files under the "advanced" tab under "preferences" but I tunes won't scan the external drive for media. There's probably a really easy answer to this question but i'm sorry but i'm not seeing it. Thanks for any help.

Make sure the Advanced preferences for "Keep..." and "Copy..." are both not checked.
Then add songs from the external using File > Add File (or Folder) to Library.  iTunes will add them, but will not copy or move the file from the external.
Try it with a few songs on the external so you can see how it works.  Once you are comfortable, you can add more.

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