Consolidating I-Tunes Librarys - Now on 2 PCs

Question

I have 2 PCs both with iTunes and both with different music libraries. Is there a way to consolidate them onto one of the PCs? We are getting rid of the one PC and we wish to retain the music on the other. I do have an external hard drive (1TB of capacity - more than the itunes library sizes combined) should I need to use it for the transfer, I just don't know how to do this and how to avoid duplicates during the transfer. Thanks, Rob

Answer 1

Getting the libraries together is easy enough. Plug the external drive into the computer you are going to get rid of and then copy the iTunes folder from the computer-soon-to-go to the external hard drive.
Now move the external hard drive to the compute ryou are keeping. Open iTunes and use File -> Add to library... and simply point to the iTunes folder on the external and it will proceed to add them all to the library. Note: you need enough room on the internal to copy in all the files.
Duplicates are another matter and unfortunately there is not a way to automatically exclude duplicates when combining the two libraries. You will have to just go in and clean up the new master library manually. Sorry.
Patrick