Cannot remove extra copies of same songs

iTunes 11.1.3 (8)
64 - bit
Hi,
In my itunes library "On This iPhone" there are 3 or 4 copies of each song.
In the past I would have clicked something like "Name" on "Categories" (top line of iTunes library where it says "Name, Album, Artist") etc.
Now it seems that the categorys are all disabled and I canot click them to sort the order of the music.
There is also a mix of some songs being in black and some in greyed out.

If you are only talking about a few duplicates see this article: iTunes - Finding and removing duplicate items
If you are talking about a lot of duplicates have a look at Teridon's iTunes Scripts, Robert has a script in there for dealing with duplicates which might be of some help: Teridon's iTunes for Windows Scripts
Just note: The duplicate eliminator in Robert's scripts package only works for these two kinds of duplicates:
1) Multiple copies of the exact same file (e.g. "Song.mp3" and "Song 1.mp3", where "Song 1.mp3" is simply a copy of Song.mp3
2) Multiple entries in the iTunes Library for the exact same file.
The script does nothing for duplicates that are the same song, but different files (e.g. encoded by someone else, has different artwork or other tags, etc.)
There are also some third party programs out there, like "Dupe Eliminator" that might help in more complicated cases. If you do a quick web search I'm sure you'll find more: Dupe Eliminator

Similar Messages

  • Multiple copies of same songs in itunes

    i-tunes is showing multiple copies of the same songs in the library....any ideas why? Not all songs have multiple copies, which is even stranger!
    Also, other than working through manually and deleting the duplicates (2,500!), is there a way I can delete them with a simple command?
    The song files are held on an external drive, to free up space on the c.
    Any ideas.....?
      Windows XP Pro  

    First in iTunes select the main library list on the left side in the source list. Now goto Edit menu and select "Show DUplicate songs".
    Now if you have ! marks beside songs, then these songs are dead/broken links and there are scripts you can run to auto remove them. SOmetimes the mark will not show til you try to play it.
    If theres no marks, It'll be hard. These alot of scripts to remove duplicates in the Mac version of iTunes but none I personally know of for the windows version, you have to manually go thru it all.
    Rictclick each dup and hit "Get Info" to see there location, you may have multiple copys of the same song in different locations. The Location of the songs will be listed on the summery tab.

  • Multiple copies of same song, how to delete?

    I have multiple copies of all my music. I am not sure how this happened. Yet when I try to delete any of the copies, I am unable to play the songs in iTunes.
    Is there a way to automatically remove all copies of the same song? A setting to change to allow me to delete the copies, yet retain the file?

    if you only have 1 actual version of the file on your disk, but have multiple entries in itunes, then just select all but 1 of the mulitple entries, hit delete, and when it asks you whether to 'keep files' or 'move to trash' click on keep files,
    This then only deletes the 'link' to the files. and should leave your itunes looking tidier with 1 remaining link in the list.
    If you DO have loads of the actual .mp3 file saved too, you can use the menu item, "View > Show Duplicates" to find them (you can do that anyway if you like). but when you delete them tell it to 'send to trash' if you want the files binning too.
    To address the problem of how you ended up with all these files, maybe you need to let itunes manage your library for you? (if it doesn't already?)
    under preferences there is a general tab under advanced options asking you whether to keep music oganized & copy files to the library when imported. with both these boxes checked it's easier to keep track of stuff and not get multiple copies going on.
    Also make sure the path to your library is pointing to the right folder under the itunes music location heading on the same preference page. Then go back to iTunes and hit the menu "Advanced > Consolidate Library".
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    dan

  • Many Copies of Same Song

    When I copie songs from my hard drive or CD to my i-tunes it makes at least two copies of every song. How do I make it so I get one copie of every song?

    Gregg, I had the same problem when I moved my library from my internal to an external hard drive. I had to go through and delete everything. I used to move the external drive back and forth between my two computers but everytime I did that it would create another copy of the same song, there were some songs that I was ending up with 5 or 6 copies of, it was horrible. I went from having 23 gigs of music to over 80, and that was on my hard drive, not just in iTunes. I ended up taking about 3 days to go through and delete everything from my music folder on the drive rather than trying to do it using iTunes. It was a pain. I haven't had that problem again since I stopped moving the drive.

  • Library uploads up to 4 copies of same song...help

    ok when I go to upload music to my library for some reason i get anywhere from 2 to 4 copies of the same song in the playlist...wht on earth is going on.
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    Well hold on - all is not lost. Until you find out what is happening you can delete Duplicates in iTunes : in the main Library List view find one of your duplicated songs; select all except one of the copies and press Command-backspace - when it asks "Move to Trash?" click that. You can either repeat that for each song or use one of the Doug scripts to do it for you.
    http://dougscripts.com/itunes/itinfo/dupin.php
    As for where the duplicates come from, to find out what is happening, you had best write out EXACTLY how you use iTunes, i.e. importing songs (ALL the steps you take - just saying "Add to Library" isn't enough - add WHAT to Library, exactly? Where from?), how you rip CDs, where else you get music from, what you do to Play your music, etc etc. Unless you give a FULL description it is near impossible to see what is happening.

  • Multiple Copies of Same Song:

    Hi,
    The title may indicate that this is probably a redundant post... I don't think it is. I searched several terms with no success for my question. Here goes:
    I'm curious about why I have two folders per artist: one in /Home/Music/ and one in /Home/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/. Is this supposed to be the case? Also, if I search for a particular song name, like 'Chameleon' by Herbie Hancock, I find that there is one file in iTunes Music under 'Compilations' and two copies in Music, each in the Herbie Hancock folder:
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    I would hesitate to believe these are duplicates, as every song in my each of the artist folders in /Home/Music/ has two copies of itself a NAME.m4a and NAME 1.m4a. It also didn't seem like any of the versions were mere aliases - they all said MPEG 4 Audio File under type, not Alias...
    Is this normal? I just started up iTunes, which says I have 11.49 GB of music, however the /Home/Music/ folder has 20.36 GB, telling me that it appears I have some duplicates.
    Can I delete one or the other of the various artist folders?
    Last, seriously last - sorry if this actually has come up and I missed it. I searched 'duplicate folders', 'duplicate artist folders' etc. to try to find a post that answered this and didn't see quite the same issue, mostly people wondering how to manage duplicate songs they imported off different CDs or named the artists just a bit differently so they got two artist folders within their iPods...
    Thanks!
    -John

    Here's the post: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6975543&#6975543
    It may not address your exact situation, but basically from what I gathered from it, if you have the option mentioned checked in your iTunes preferences, you can be reasonably assured that everything in iTunes was copied from elsewhere and iTunes has maintained it's own version. I guess in your case, you may want to look through iTunes, and if you don't see anything glaringly missing, delete the things in /Music/ because iTunes has copied it's own version into /Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/.
    This is at least my take. I probably don't have as much music as you do - it took me about 10 minutes to open two finder windows next to each other and go through the Music folder, check to see if a folder for the same artist/album existed in iTunes Music folder and delete the duplicates. I had about 10GB of music (unique music, that is... the Music folder had about 20GB from the duplicates). Depending on how much you have you may or may not want to do this!
    Also, check out Consolidating your library (from iTunes, Advanced > Consolidate Library). I believe this searches your system for music/photos not in iTunes and puts them in if they are not and leaves them alone if they already are. The you can be sure that everything you need is in the iTunes folder and delete all the rest. I'm sure the help file would say more about this option.
    Good luck!
    -John

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  • How can I remove multiple copies of the same song from the iTunes listing?

    How can I remove multiple copies of the same song from the iTunes listing. The program seems to be picking up the same songs from, for example, my user area and my public area in the C drive

    As above, Apple's official advice is here... HT2905 - How to find and remove duplicate items in your iTunes library, however it is a manual process and the article fails to explain some of the potential pitfalls.
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    Use my DeDuper script if you're not sure, don't want to do it by hand, or want to preserve/merge ratings, play counts and playlist membership. See this thread for background and please take note of the warning to backup your library before deduping.
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    Calling Apple Support if a good idea unless someone can explain this mystery.  I might even take one of my laptops to the Apple store and show a Genius.
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  • I have extra tracks of the same song,plus extra albums showing of the same album in their relevant lists how can i remove the extra ones safely?.

    Please advise, i have somehow downloaded some extra tracks  of the same songs, plus their relavant albums showing in songs/albums lists on my ipod nano 7th gen,how can i remove the unwanted extra songs/albums  safely. Please note i am a newcomer to using a ipod nano/uploading,downloading music.

    Hi Myketyke,
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    Since you are syncing your iPod nano to your computer, the best option is to remove the duplicates from the iTunes library on your computer.  Then resync your device.  The article below will show you how:
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    http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2905
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  • Can I purchase multiple copies of the same song

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    As above, Apple's official advice is here... HT2905 - How to find and remove duplicate items in your iTunes library, however it is a manual process and the article fails to explain some of the potential pitfalls.
    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 if you're not sure, don't want to do it by hand, or want to preserve/merge ratings, play counts and playlist membership. See this thread for background 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)
    tt2

  • HT1349 Due to backing up my itunes on an external 1 terrabite hard drive, I now have duplicates of the same song in my library.  Anyone know how to run something to remove duplicates?  It's taking up too much space on my hard drive.

    Is there something I can run to remove duplicate songs from my itunes library.  This occurred when I backed my itunes library up on an external hard drive, now I have multiple duplicates of the same songs.  HELP!

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  • ITunes on my phone is no longer playing some songs, even those I have purchased with my phone.  They will play fine on my pc itunes.  I also cannot remove the audio books that are on my phone and add others and the audio books on my phone will not play.

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    C Mawle wrote:
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