Duplicate missing songs

Hi,
I recently had to move my entire music library from one partition to another, and made a bit of a mess of working with iTunes. Now iTunes has two copies of every song in the library, every other one being marked with a question mark because (obviously) it can't find it on the disk!
Manually deleting the songs with the question marks in iTunes is going to be hard as I have around 6000 tracks (unless there is a way of showing only the the missing tracks and bulk deleting them?)
Can anyone offer any assistance?
Thanks
Rob

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Duplicates missing in iTunes 11

Hi everyone. Not sure if this is going to help anyone or not but since I solved a big bugaboo of iTunes 11 I thought other people may have the same problem so I thought, what the hey.
I downloaded iTunes 11 but the 2 things I LOVED about prior versions were missing - duplicate and song count. I called support and they said they took away those two features. CRAP! I was ****** to say the least. Yesterday I thought I would see if I could go back to an older version of iTunes. I tried but when I uninstalled 11 and tried to download 10.7 I got a major error. I thought, great now I f@@ed up my iTunes. Called support, explained what i did and why. They told me that once you download 11 you CANNOT go back to a prior version. He also said that the 2 features I wanted were taken away from 11. He told me to just download 11 and that should fix my error problem.
Now comes the good news ------- I went to iTunes and downloaded 11 and while I was making the screen the way I liked it - click this, click that - guess what I found? Duplicates and song count! YAHOO!!!!! Now whether it was an update to 11 or not I have no clue but I got exactly what I wanted.
Whether this can help anyone or not I have no clue, but I thought I would tell anyone who had the same "problem" with 11.
Janet

The Show Duplicates/Show Exact Duplicates features were missing from 11.0 and restore in 11.0.1.
Note if trying to eliminate duplicates from the library Shift-View-Show Exact Duplicates should reveal them. Keep one of each repeated group of files and don't send to the recycle bin unless you are sure that there are multiple files on the disc as opposed to multiple entries to the same file.
There is also my DeDuper script if you don't want to do it by hand. This can preserve ratings, play counts, playlist membership, etc. which are lost in a manual clean up. Please take note of the warning to backup your library before deduping. See this thread for background on deduping and the script.
The status bar with song count and playlist length should turn off and on with Ctrl / although in my case I don't seem to be able to turn it off again.
Downgrading iTunes is possible, but you normally need to restore an older version of your library database at the same time.
tt2

Anyway to automatically relink random missing song files in iTunes library? Random songs have "!" while other songs in same album folder are fine.

I can manually relink a missing song by navigating to the album folder in my iTunes media folder where all of my music is stored, but there are hundreds of "missing" songs in my 100+ GB Library. Any way to get iTunes to reconcile the library in a more automated fashion? I am fearful of solutions that may introduce a ton of duplicates.
Would also like to know why this has happened so I can prevent it in future. Why are some songs in an album coming up missing and others in the same root folder playing fine?? It's not like my library is missing, 80% of my music is fine.
My MAC iTunes library is organized by iTunes and all new media is copied into the iTunes folder (which I have "living" on an external USB 500GB hard drive, which I sometimes use with my PC Laptop when I travel - I don't do this often and it has never caused a problem before.)

UPDATE: I contact the developer fo the iTunes Track CPR script just to give him some feedback. His reply, "
Thanks for letting me know. CPR needs a good looking at. But have you tried "Music Folder Files Not Added"?
http://dougscripts.com/466"
I used that script and it found all of the MIA "missing" songs and then added them back to my iTunes library (took about 7 hours to auto add about 2000+ songs.) This process also created duplicates, but I was able to use the "Manage Duplicates" feature of iTunes under the File menu to see a list of all duplicates; then I deleted all of the songs with the"!" next to their names (took about 45 minutes.)
So I think in the end this did save me a lot of time and aggrevation.
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction Chris!

Apple update ruined my playlists, they are no longer on my ipod and playlist i didnt have are. how can I get mine back. And i am missing songs that appear in itunes but not on the ipod?

apple update erased my playlists, they are no longer showing on my iTunes. I am missing songs that do appear in iTunes and should be on the ipod but are not, and new playlists that I didn't have are now where mine should be. Any suggestions as to getting "MY" ipod back?

- Reset the iOS device. Nothing will be lost
Reset iOS device: Hold down the On/Off button and the Home button at the same time for at
least ten seconds, until the Apple logo appears.
- Unsync/delete all music and resync
To delete all music go to Settings>General>Usage>Storage>Music>Tap edit in upper right and then tap the minus sign by All Music
- Reset all settings
Go to Settings > General > Reset and tap Reset All Settings.
All your preferences and settings are reset. Information (such as contacts and calendars) and media (such as songs and videos) aren’t affected.
- Restore from backup. See:
iOS: Back up and restore your iOS device with iCloud or iTunes
- Restore to factory settings/new iOS device.

I have missing songs that i purchased on my old iphone. they are not in my purchased folder. but in itunes store when i look the song up, it has the purchased logo next to it.... but no way to download it

i have missing songs that i purchased on my old iphone. they are not in my purchased folder. but in itunes store when i look the song up, it has the purchased logo next to it.... but no way to download it

If the songs are still on your ipod, make sure autosync is disabled in iTunes on your computer, connect and right click on it in the device list, then choose "transfer purchases" to copy all bought media and apps from your ipod to your computer.
If the songs are not on your computer and got deleted from your ipod as well, you can't get them back, unless you have a backup of your iTunes library as part of your computer backup.

4 of the songs on a recently purchased album do not appear on my computer. I bought the album on my phone, and all of the songs are accounted for there, but on my computer it shows as an incomplete album and ITunes wants me to buy the missing songs?

I recently purchased Slipknot's ".5: The Gray Chapter" on my phone via an ITunes gift card worth $15 dollars. The album did have some trouble downloading because of a bad signal, and a good number of songs "could not be downloaded at this time". To download the missing songs, I had to go into ITunes store>more>purchased>music>all songs and click download on the few that didn't. This fixed that problem, and now the entire album is on my phone, but when the album transferred over to my computer, 4 of the songs still did not appear. Not only that, it says that they have not been purchased. The ITunes card I used only has a dollor left on it, so I know it registered the purchase. The 10th, 14th, 15th, and 16th tracks still have $1.29 next to them, and ITunes is showing the album as an incomplete.

We are having this same issue. We have over 200 songs that are now missing and only our most recent ones show up in our ITunes library. Fortunately we have one phone that still has all of our music still in tact. This phone is no longer one I will be using as I upgraded to the Iphone 6, and only the most recent purchased songs remain. The rest are no where to be found and the iTunes store shows that I would need to re-purchase. Not sure what to do as when I tried to sync my last phone, all the songs were gone.

HT3819 Bought new iMac & moved (or thought so) music from old PC to new Mac. Now several hundred songs are orphaned on old PC; , I can "see" them with both machines turned on & iTunes open. "Missing" songs show in iMac Shared folder. How do I move & retir

Bought new iMac & moved (or thought I had) all of my music from the old PC to the new iMac. Have discovered several hundred songs are orphaned on old PC; I can "see" them with both machines turned on & iTunes open. "Missing" songs show in iMac itunes Shared folder. How do I move them all so I can then & retire the old PC?

From things you are saying, such as "shared folder" and having both machines on, it doesn't sound to me like you truly moved the whole iTunes collection.
iTunes: How to move [or copy] your music to a new computer [or another drive] - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527
do not confuse moving your whole folder and library with moving just media files as in
iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449
Quick answer if you let iTunes manage your music: Copy the entire iTunes folder (and in doing so all its subfolders and files) intact to the other drive. Start iTunes with the option key held down and guide it to the new location of the library.
Macworld - How to transfer iTunes libraries between PC and Mac - http://www.macworld.com/article/46248/2005/08/shiftitunes.html

(!) How to locate the original file for missing songs?

song could not be used because original file could not be found. Would you like to locate?
I got this message when I last tried to synch my ipod. The message said there were 100 files which could not be found.   Actually more than 100 songs show the exclamation mark that says the file can not be found.
Previous posts on this issue suggest the underlying file has been changed or moved out from the ITunes organisation. Well the last time I synched my ipod on Lion a few days ago it was fine. On Sunday I wiped my hard drive, carried out the upgrade to Mountain Lion as a clean install, and used Migration Assistant to bring my user data over. After that I ran cclean and disk utility permissions and disk verification. Then this happened.
I migrated my iTunes Library to an external hard drive six months ago. That was disconnected during the upgrade so I am not sure why the files can’t be found now.    Anyway, I want to recover the missing files . I could not find them by name, album or artist on the external drive. So I thought I would find them in Time Machine backup #1. I couldn’t!. Nor could I find missing songs on my alternate Time Machine backup #2. Both Time Machine backups are set to include the external drive. Songs recognised in iTunes are visible in the backups, but not the ones that are missing.
I have a third backup volume which was a clone of the Lion setup before I did the upgrade, but I can’t access this or Mac for a few days.
I did have some permissions failures after the 10.7.4 upgrade which resulted in creating 2 new standard user accounts. Maybe I’v e got some files across these users? But in that case I’d have seen problems before the upgrade?   I notice a fair number of these are compilations imported from CD about 4 years ago. Bu tnot all.
(1). Is there a smart way to list all the files that are missing?
I can scroll through all of ITunes Music to see where there are exclamation marks. I’d like to only list these missing songs.
(2). How can I locate the missing media files?
- a search on Name / Album / Artist hasn’t found them in live drives or on TM backups. I’ve still got the missing songs on my iPod, however.
Once I can answer these questions with your help I’ll know what would be the best way to try to recover, and to work out what went wrong. I’m shocked that I can’t find them in backup.   Eventually I can restore audio from original source. If they were photos that went missing from library and backups then I would have no way to get back!
(3) could this happen in iPhoto? (shiver)

Thanks for taking the time to look at my problem. Shared is empty and I didn't back it up - I only transferred the standard and Admin users to the clean install of Mountain Lion.
But I got some valuable insight into how the iTunes library is set up from your article on split Libraries. I'd like to see it in the Tips for iTunes for Mac.   My Itunes library was set up in pre-Itunes 8 structure, and as I'd moved it to an external drive it didn't get migrated to the new structure in recent upgrades, perhaps?
I found your article extremely useful : https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3991. That gave me the means to restore the missing files more quickly than getting the original CDs out and re-importing them to iTunes.
So I've now restored the missing files and started the backups rolling ....
I still don't understand how they went missing. However the best backup was the Ipod itself.

When syncing my iTunes to my iPad from the laptop, I get a list of missing songs; they are in the library, but not in the music folder on my HD. In particular, I uploaded 3 CDs at the same time, all are in my library - but two are missing from the folder.

When syncing my iTunes to my iPad from the laptop, I get a list of missing songs; they are in the library, but not in the music folder on my HD. In particular, I uploaded 3 CDs at the same time, all are in my library, and all synced to the iPad - but the music from two of them are missing from the music folder. Questions are (a) where might they have gone? and (b) is there a way of "reverse loading" them back to my hard drive from the iPad? Thanks in advance!

Hi dones49,
It sounds like your issue here is that iTunes can not find the files for some of the songs you have brought into it. This happens occasionally even if the songs have not been moved from the location that iTunes places them on import or purchase. When you try to use the song, iTunes prompts you to find the file, as you have seen.
To find the file, use the information in this article to navigate through the iTunes media folders -
Locate and organize your iTunes files
If you are still unable to locate the files, you may need to download them from the iTunes store again, or rip them from your CDs. See this article for assistance with downloading your past purchases -
Download past purchases
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Best,
Brett L

My ipod 4th gen gets wiped clean of music anytime I sync. it then only redownloads some of the music in the library and wont upload missing songs. They show on the ipod grayed out. How do I get this to stop? re-uploading takes 4 hours.

my ipod 4th gen gets wiped clean of music anytime I sync. it then only redownloads some of the music in the library and wont upload missing songs. They show on the ipod grayed out. How do I get this to stop? re-uploading takes 4 hours and is never completed. I only get some of the 6000+ songs I have. This started when I updated to IOS5 i think.

Try:
- Reset the iOS device. Nothing will be lost
Reset iOS device: Hold down the On/Off button and the Home button at the same time for at
least ten seconds, until the Apple logo appears.
- Unsync all music and resync
- Reset all settings
Go to Settings > General > Reset and tap Reset All Settings.
All your preferences and settings are reset. Information (such as contacts and calendars) and media (such as songs and videos) aren’t affected.
- Restore from backup. See:
iOS: How to back up
- Restore to factory settings/new iOS device.

I just dled Itunes onto my new laptop, when I synced with my music folder, all of the songs were duplicate on song list, what do I do?

I just dled Itunes onto my new laptop, when I synced with my music folder, all of the songs were duplicate on song list, what do I do? What did I do wrong, and where do I find a manual to learn how to use ITunes???

" When I did this, my library showed all the music I have "purchased" from itunes but did not have the music that I downloaded a long time ago through itunes from my old CDs."
Correct.
" How can I get that music to show up in my library now on my new computer? "
Copy it from your old computer or your backup copy of your old computer.
The sync is one way - computer to ipod.

HT1386 Switched from ipod to ipod touch. When trying to sync songs get lost. Show in the library and playlist but a message says cannot be found. An exclamation symbol with a circle aroung it shows on the missing songs. How can I sync the new ipod touch?

Switched from ipod to ipod touch. When trying to sync, songs get lost. Songs show in the library and playlist but get a message that says songs cannot be found. An exclamation symbol with a circle aroung it shows on the missing songs. How can I sync the new ipod touch?

The ! Next to a song:
The song can’t be located; it may have been moved or deleted
To find them try:
iTunes: Finding lost media and downloads
You can redownload iTunes purchases by:
Downloading past purchases from the App Store, iBookstore, and iTunes Store

IPod is showing duplicates of songs, but songs are not duplicated in iTunes.

iPod touch is showing duplicates of songs, but songs are not duplicated in iTunes... any ideas how to fix? Tried resyncing, didn't work.

I'm fishing slightly but you may have casing inconsistenices in artist or album names that cause the iOS firmware to see more than one instance of the album but with each getting all the tracks. Merging stuff in iTunes via sort fields may also have unintended consequenses on the device. Could you post back a screenshot or decribe the symptoms more fully, ie. exactly which menu screen you are in on the iPod, what is repeated etc. The songs menu for example can correctly list more than one copy of a song if it appears on different albums.
tt2

Is there not an easier way to find missing songs?

Is there a smarter way to find missing songs and albums besides having to go through each one individually? Some kind of batch process would be nice...
How do you guys efficiently find missing songs or albums?

don't you just love the way Apple answers your questions in this forum?

I haven't been on itunes in a very long time. I had a lot more songs than are there now. What can I do about it, or is there a way to access the missing songs?

I haven't been on itunes in a very long time. I had a lot more songs than there are listed there now. What can I do about it, or is there something I can do to get the missing songs back?

forget about it, I actually figured it out.

Duplicate missing songs

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