Deleting a lot of duplicate songs

i have over 5000 duplicate songs in my library. is there a way to dump them fast with out losing the original?

You can try sorting by "Date Added" to see if a bunch got added one day by mistake. That would clump them all together to make them easier to find.
itunes menu > View > View Options
Check the Date Added box, if it's not already

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I tried to delete all of my duplicate songs in iTunes and it deleted all of my music. Is there a way i get my music back?

i tried to delete all of my duplicate songs in iTunes and it deleted all of my music. Is there a way i get my music back?

From the backup you maintain in case something drastic happens to your collection as it surely will when your drive crashes, the computer is stolen, etc.?
Are the files in the trash? I don't let iTunes manage my music so when I delete a track I have to hunt down the file, drag it to the trash, and empty the trash in order to get rid of it. I don't know how iTunes does it for others.

Lots of duplicate songs-anyway to delete a bunch quickly

I kind of messed up my library when I was attempting to set up separate libraries. I have straightened it out, however, now I have 1-2 duplicates of almost all of my songs. I was wondering if there was an action that would delete all of the duplicates at once instead of highlighting them and deleting them individually.

In your main library, choose View > View Options and check off the "Date Added" box.
Now if you are in list or cover flow view, you will see a column on the far right called "Date Added".
You won't see it in Grid view.
Click on that "Date Added" column header.
All the songs you duplicated when doing your library stuff should be grouped together, to make it easier to figure out what you need to delete.

I have a lot of duplicate songs on my iPhone 4--Is there an easy way to find and delete duplicates?

Is there an easy way to find and delete duplicate songs on an IPhone 4?

A belated hello. On the topic of duplicate songs / tracks showing up in, say, your iPhone Music app but not in your iTunes Library, with these versions installed ....
iTunes 10.5
iPhone 4 running on iOS 5
.... I discovered this too. This is what I did:
1. purchased full album from the iTunes Store
(once download completed, album magically showed up in iPhone Music app, as expected, without having to sync)
2. I then went to my iTunes Music view and edited the album year (Multiple Item Information)
3. Synced
4. All album tracks showed up in duplicate in iPhone Music app (but not in iTunes view)
Solution:
1. in iTunes, I changed back the album year to the one iTunes Store originally downloaded
2. Re-synced
3. Now all album tracks show up but no longer in duplicate in iPhone Music app
Lesson learned: When purchasing music from iTunes Store, leave metadata untouched.

I need to delete a lot of duplicates on iPhoto. I just bought my MacBook Pro and was so excited I downloaded my external hard drive without thinking through the process. I now realize I had my photos doubled up. So I actually have the same library twice.

Hello All!
I am so excited about my new computer and I didn't know that my external hard drive had so many pictures duplicated on it. So I downloaded the entire hard drive. I thought iPhoto was going to be my answer, and now after reading a lot of discussions, it seems I have royally screwed up. Please help me fix this problem. I am a computer novice. An even more Mac novice. I need very simple directions. I would just start over with iPhoto, but I downloaded my digital camera with brand new photos on iPhoto and also downloaded my digital camera software on my new MacBookPro. I am afraid if I "start over" with iPhoto I will lose my digital camera pictures. I bought the Mac to finally get my pictures straight, and look at the mess I have made. I had AVG PC cleanup and used that program last night to delete duplicates from my PC. I also used it to delete duplicates from my external hard drive. I omega. I know, I know, too late huh? But I am teachable. And I now have my external hard drive fixed. But now, my question to the community is how to fix my new Mac, and my iPhoto.
Thanks,

SweetThunder73 wrote:
When you say to remove the photos out of the iPhoto folder, then import the clean single copies, I am understanding that the "original" file that the decloner was run against is now the "clean" single copies?
Ok, you've got iPhoto Library that you have imported everything into, you can't delete the iPhoto Library and start over because you have only one copy of some pictures in there, combined with a lot of duplicates.
You want all the duplicates out, but it will take you ages to do it by hand.
What you do is.
1: Right click on the iPhoto Library and "Show Package Contents"
2: You will see a folder called Originals, these are all your original photo's, copy this folder to a external drive someplace, it's your backup.
3: Select the Originals folder again and from the Finder Menu > File > Duplicate.
4: Now you will have a OriginalsCopy folder, move that OriginalsCopy folder onto the desktop area out of the iPhoto Library folder. Close the iPhoto Library folder/window.
5: Download the Decloner software and install it, use it to find all the "real" duplicates, via it's content on the OriginalsCopy folder.
6: From the Finder menu > New Folder, now send the duplicate files to that folder, so all that is left in the OriginalsCopy folder is 1 copy of your pictures, minus all the duplicates which are now in New Folder.
7: Open iPhoto and remove all your pictures in there. The iPhoto Library will update to become empty.
8: Now import the pictures from the OriginalsCopy folder, these will now have only one copy of each picture.
9: Open your New Folder, from the Edit menu > Select All and
10 From the Finder > File Menu > Open With > Preview.
Now you have one copy in your iPhoto Library and the duplicates in a New Folder opened with Preview which you can compare to make sure.
Make as many backups of your pictures as you think you need during this prcess, but eventually you only want 1 picture of all you have in the iPhoto Library.
Some pictures may be the same thing but a little smaller etc., these obviously are not duplicates, and you can weed those out by hand in iPhoto.
Good Luck.

How can i get rid of a lot of duplicate songs?

Hi,
after the transfer of an itunes librairy on my new imac, my teenaged boy have done the same with his own itunes librairy, but there are a lot of duplicate (more than a thousand). I want to sent them to the trash, but manually it's a tiring and boring job, automator doesn't have this kind of command, and i'm not educated in using applescript.
I need HELP for this purpose;
A lot of thank for the one(s) who will be able to help me
Sincerely yours
Pierre MINTZ

Well, this is probably not free but the utility called "Spring cleaning" has a module which automatically deletes duplicate files ... assuming they have the same name ?
Maybe this helps ?

I have lots of duplicate songs in ITunes. How can I tell which ones were purchased vs ripped?

I am trying to delete duplicate songs in iTunes library. How can I tell which ones were iTunes purchases and which ones I ripped from CD's.

If you turn on the Kind column your purchases will read Purchased AAC audio file or Protected AAC audio file.
BTW I've written a script called DeDuper which can help remove unwanted duplicates. See this thread for background.
tt2

How to delete massive amount of duplicate songs in itunes library

how do i EASILY delete a massive amount of duplicated dongs in my iTunes library

Apple's official advice on duplicates is here... HT2905: How to find and remove duplicate items in your iTunes library. It is a manual process and the article fails to explain some of the potential pitfalls such as lost ratings and playlist membership.
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 ratings, play counts and playlist membership. See this thread for background, this post for detailed instructions, 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.)
The most recent version of the script can tidy dead links as long as there is at least one live duplicate to merge stats and playlist membership to and should cope sensibly when the same file has been added via multiple paths.
tt2

Duplicate songs delete... i need your help!

I have a lot of duplicate songs on my ipods and my mac's. Does anyone know of any good script or program that will find duplicate songs AND delete the duplicate song(s)?
I have over 140Gb of music and i do not have the time or patience to go through them all manualy.
Thanks!

Head over to Doug's Scripts for iTunes.
He's got a few scripts for managing duplicate tracks.
I use this script for dealing with duplicates.

How to delete duplicate songs from itunes

I created a playlist on itunes and there are a lot of duplicate songs. I tried deleting it but itunes will not let me do it? How do i delete duplicate songs?

I clicked on show duplicates and it show all duplicates but when i click on one song and hit delete nothing happens, it does not delete the duplicate song from my playlist. How do i delete these songs????

How do I get rid of duplicate songs on iPhone?

I have the iPhone 4 and with one of the recent updates, my iTunes changed. Now when my phone syncs with my iTunes library, it has a lot of duplicate songs showing up on the phone. I went through manually and deleted them off my phone, but then when syncing again recently, they were all put on there again. What can I do to get duplicates off there for good?

Settings > Music > Show All Music > Off
tt2

Easy way to remove duplicate songs

After a no of ITunes disasters (most of which I suspect were my fault) I have no ended up with a full library which has a lot of duplicates songs. Being an essentially lazy person is there an easier way to sort them rather than simply displaying the duplicates and deleting one by one

There is a duplicate removal script here:
http://mysite.verizon.net/teridon/itunesscripts/
I doesn't appear to have been tested with the latest itunes although it would probably work OK.
Always backup you files before doing this kind of thing in case you don't like the result.

HT2905 All my songs have a unrequested duplicate with iCloud tag to download. How to delete without deleting the lot?.

The HT 2905 is for duplicate contacts? ; no help to solve MY problem which is : I can't delete the iCloud duplicate song. I get a warning that all songs will be deleted from the computer, I pods and so on. I want to delete only the duplicates NOT ALL the songs. This is frustrating.

Use Shift > View > Show Exact Duplicate Items 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. If you have multiple references to the same files then don't send to the recycle bin, and the files will be left behind for the other entries to use. Use my DeDuper script if you don't want to do it by hand, or want to preserve 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

When I delete a duplicate song, how do I choose which file to keep?

When I delete a duplicate song, how do I choose which file to keep?

What is reappearing is just the list entry with the indication that it is available for download - it's not taking up any space on your computer. You can remove it by control- or right-clicking it and choosing 'delete'.
The recent changes in iTunes have confused a lot of people. Here is a summary of the situation:
Only the most recent episode shows when you first subscribe. In the default 'My Podcasts' view click 'Old episodes' to show earlier episodes, click 'Done' to hide them or 'Add all' to keep them there and also add them to List view.
Alternatively, in 'List' view control- or right-click on the name of the podcast or the episode and choose 'Show old episodes' to reveal all the previous episodes.
In both views you can now delete both downloaded or un-downloaded episodes from both views by control- or right-clicking on the name of the episode.
In both views each episode now has a blue circle to the left showing it as unplayed. Each episode can be double-clicked to be played as a stream without downloading it first (so you don't have to wait for it to download fully). Click the cloud icon at right to download it (as you will have to to sync it to an iPod). Note that if you click the cloud icon to the right of the title of the podcast itself, rather than an episode, you will initiate a download of all episodes.

Getting rid of duplicate songs: a lot of them!

I've imported my iTunes songs from my old PC to my new iMac but everything has been duplicated so now there is two of every song!!
It's a nightmare deleting each one separately, so any suggestions for a quick solution? Should I delete the lot and then import them again by connecting my iPod?
Any ideas gratefully received!
Tracey
iMac Mac OS X (10.4.4)

If your entire library is on your iPod, it's probably the easiest way to restore the library.
Download Senuti or iPodRip or similar application. You can find the latest versions on versiontracker.com
Proceed with caution. I don't want to feel responsible for possible loss of your library.
If you have set up your iPod to automatically update, set it to manual update first.
Or (this is from the Keyboard Shortcuts)
iPod shortcuts
Prevent iPod from automatically updating when you connect it to your computer
Command-Option as you connect the iPod to your computer (hold the keys down until the iPod appears in the iTunes Source list)
Then run one of the applications you downloaded and transfer the contents to your computer.
There are other methods to get rid of the duplicates, but the approach to delete them depends on what kind of duplicates you have.
Do you have duplicate song files or duplicate entries in the library.
Hope this helps.
M
17' iMac fp 800 MHz 768 MB RAM Mac OS X (10.3.9) Several ext. HD (backup and data)

Deleting a lot of duplicate songs

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