Exclamation marks in smart playlists

I have created a few smart playlists that select a number of episodes from my podcasts.
They work pretty well, except that I get a lot of ancient episodes (in the smart playlist) that are no longer on my disk and, therefore, all have an exclamation mark in the first column.
I have no idea where iTunes gets the idea it should display these episodes in the smart playlist.
When i go to the podcast and look at the list of episodes, they are definitely not there.
And I am pretty sure that I have not messed with the files themselves.
Of course, I can't remove the entries from the smart playlists manually ;-(
I tried to delete the playlist and create a new one, and I have searched this forum, to no avail.
Does anyone have an idea or a hint what I could try?
Thanks a lot in advance.
Regards,
Gabriel.

I wanted to know your playlist settings as I thought I'd try them on my iTunes. Turns out it has created the playlist perfectly, only adding episodes to it that I have and not any that aren't there. There are even a couple of podcasts that have 1 or 2 older episodes I have kept, and they are there too.
So, it seems like your playlist settings are actually correct. So it is strange you are having the problem. I'll monitor my playlist, but to be honest, I don't know what to suggest as I am not having the problem myself. Sorry.

Similar Messages

I keep getting exclamation marks on my playlist on itunes, but this is only for the songs downloaded on my phone. I can't play any songs on my phone, only on the original itunes library. Whats going on??

but this is only for the songs downloaded on my phone. I can't play any songs on my phone, only on the original itunes library. Whats going on??

The iPod backup that iTunes makes does not inlcuded synced media like apps and music. Thes those iTunes are not restored to the iPod unless they are in the iTunes library.
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.

Trying to create a new playlist but several songs are marked with exclamation mark and will not transfer into playlist - any advice?

I have never had trouble creating playlists before but quite a few songs will not transfer and ate marked at the side with an exclamation mark. I know ZERO about technology so if you can help me in very simple language, I would be very grateful! I am wondering if it may have something to do with the fact that I have had to start new accounts when I have moved countries, on order to be able to use the credit card of the new country in the Itunes store of that country... I am in Aus and have bought a lot of tunes here but last year I was living in Brunei and, in order to use my brunei credit card ( as it was the only one with money in it) , I had to set it up as different to my Aus account. Could this be the issue? prior to Aus my account was in Ireland. I have paid for all these songs but it seems I cannot now use some of them... Please help!!! Thanks in advance for any assistance you can offer, Lisa

The exclamation mark next to a song means it is no longer where iTunes is looking for it. iTunes won't let you add such "missing" songs to a playlist. Possible reasons for a song going missing are that you or some third party software has moved or deleted it, or a folder that contained it, or that the drive it lives on has had a change of drive letter, or a configuration file has changed making iTunes look in a slightly different place from before.
Select one of the songs with an exclamation mark, press CTRL+I to Get Info, say no when prompted to locate it, then note down the location from the Summary tab that begins file://localhost/ - please post back this path as given. Hopefully you can find the file this entry in your library is supposed to be connected to. Assuming you can please post back this path as well. These two items of information may suggest a fix through folder manipulation or a configuration change.
If things have got a little more disorganized then, as long as the tracks still exist to be found, my FindTracks script should be able to reconnect them to iTunes. FindTracks uses some fuzzy matching routines and searches for multiple potential locations. For more details see this thread. Start by selecting the tracks of a single album and then run the script. Your media folder should normally be detected automatically, e.g. as C:\Users\<User>\iTunes\iTunes Media, but you can edit the path if it is wrong or a particular batch of lost files are stored at another path. If it works as expected you can then move on to fixing the rest of the library in bigger batches.
tt2

TS1717 I have exclamation marks (!) which has ruined my playlist as it doesn't function as it should. I was downloading music when a scan had started which I cancelled. Ever since then I've had these exclamation marks anyone know how to fix it?

I have exclamation marks at the beginning of the titles which has ruined my playlist as it doesn't function as it should. I was downloading music when a scan started which I then cancelled as it was slowing down my download. Ever since then I've had these exclamation marks and now these tunes are not transferrable and I've lost them in my music file on the ipod nano and so cannot reload them again. Anyone know how to remove the !!!'s or clean my files?

You get exclamation marks or dead tracks because iTunes can’t find the file. This can happen for a number of reasons:
The song file or a folder in its path was renamed
The song file or the folder it is in has been moved
The song file has been deleted
The device containing the song files e.g. external drive is not accessible or the drive letter has changed..
Usually the actual music files are still there, so you need to check to see if you can find them.
If they are there, open iTunes and select a problem track, right click and select Get Info.
Answer NO when asked if you want to locate the track.
Now you should see where iTunes thinks the tack is located on the summary tab, how does this compare with where the track actually is.
This info should help work out what has gone wrong.

How can I find all exclamation marks in my iTunes without clicking on each song? Is there a way to delete all instead of one at a time?

How can I find all exclamation marks in my iTunes without clicking on each song? Can they be deleted all at once instead of one song at a time?

Lost & Found
Create a playlist called Found, select everything in Music and drag it into the Found playlist (it may take some time to count the tracks that are to be dropped). Create a smart playlist called Lost matching All the rules Playlist is Music and Playlist is not Found. Your lost tracks will be in this playlist.
Optional: It depends a bit on why things aren't where iTunes expects to find them but if they are in sensible Artist & Album folders in some common location then my FindTracks script should be able to reconnect them to iTunes. FindTracks uses some fuzzy matching routines and searches for multiple potential locations. For more details see this thread. Once you have repaired the tracks that can be found you can drag the contents of the Lost playlist into Found which will update things.
Or, you can simply delete all the tracks in the Lost playlist with Ctrl-A to select them and then Shift-Delete to delete.
tt2

How to delete the tracks with exclamation marks?

I have just moved about 10 gigabytes of music I don't listen to off my hard disk to an external hard drive. This was to declutter my hard drive and get me down to about 50% free. Itunes now has all the moved tracks still listed with exclamation marks next to them all now. I want rid of these songs from my Itunes view. How can I get rid of these moved tracks now without manually deleting the batches. Annoying that exclamation mark field is not sortable or would be easy to mass delete.
Anyone got a neat solution out there?
Thanks in advance.
Lorne

Yes, but now you have lost all your regular playlists, ratings, play counts, last played dates, non-embedded artwork etc.
Hope you don't miss them. If you do it might be possible to restore an earlier version of your library file and then bring it up-to-date with the free scripts at Doug's site.
An all iTunes, no loss of data approach would have been as follows:
Create a playlist called Found, select everything in Music and drag it into the Found playlist. Create a smart playlist called Lost matching All the rules Playlist is Music and Playlist is not Found. Your lost tracks will be in this playlist. You can delete them all with a Command-A to select them and Option-Delete to remove them. You can then delete the Lost & Found playlists.
I normally recommend the scripts as being an easier way to do things that you may want to do again.
tt2

ITunes 9 not allowing most smart playlists to automatically sync with iPod

Oh dearie me. This is another major blunder for iTunes 9 - which I cannot see anyone else has noticed yet (but sorry if I couldn't find an existing related post).
Since upgrading to iTunes 9- almost all of my smart playlists (whick worked perfectly before) have disappeared from my iPod. They have also removed themselves from the list in iTunes where I choose which playlists to sync. Yes- I use the 'sync only checked songs & playlists' option (but please don't suggest I manually manage music, as I've been there before).
The problem seems to happen when a smart playlist references 2 or more other (smart or normal) playlists in iTunes. This excludes about 95% of my playlists from syncing in iTunes 9.
Before the upgrade I noticed that iTunes posted an exclamation mark next to any playlist on my iPod that had a rule referencing a playlist in iTunes- but they still sunc perfectly for years. I mean if Apple allowed us to make our own smart playlists only for the iPod- then I would understand- but its the only way I can see to have a playlist for example that plays all favourite but not recently played dance music (regardles of actual genre); nor anything I have moved to a manual playlist called 'not for syncing'.
As a test, I tried an experiment with a new smart playlist which said so long as the song appears in (all) 2 smart playlists- to see when it would become 'syncable'. As would be expected- it was not available to sync. As soon as I deleted the 2nd playlist rule- ie it only had to be in 1 playlist, it became 'syncable'. As soon as I added a 2nd rule again- be it a smart or normal playlist- it became 'unsyncable' again (disappeared from the sync list).
Apple please fix this ASAP. I cannot see this as being desirable behavior in any way, shape or form.
And while you are at it with the new improvements with iTunes 9 playlisting- please add an option to exclude certain 'match' parameters- eg match x and y, but exclude anything that matches z. Besides allowing for much better playlisting, that would (to a degree) also provide a workable workaround to the problem above.
Yours faithfully,
Mike

Cheers for chiming in- but I don't think that will solve this problem. I have no podcasts on my iPod- only mp3s. My problem is I have way too much music in my library- over 300GB. So I have all my iTunes smart playlists- eg genre Dubstep- but then I have an iPod version of each of these eg Dubstep iPod- which says match both criteria- playlist is Dubstep, & playlist is not 'Master not sync'. Every smart playlist on my iPod revolves around this playlist- whose rules are if any of the following 2 criteria match: rating is not between 1&2 stars; playlist is not the normal manual playlist called 'not for iPod sync'- where I drop any mp3s that I don't need on my iPod. This scheme worked perfectly before.
But I am gonna chew on what you said today- maybe there is a clue in there or maybe if I experiment with the 'music' rule. Either way- this is not an improvement- it's about 200 steps back. I still maintain that the problem I am seeing is not intentional coding. Something broke in the codebase & now iTunes 9 has playlist / syncing bugs which need fixing.
Either that, or Apple need to finally release a 500GB iPod- so I can get rid of my iPod specific playlists & sync all my iTunes playlists. Then I would even consider putting podcasts on there as well...;) Heck maybe even some video... crazy idea, I know.

Moving iTunes to new account, new disk location, exclamation marks

I have been using an iTunes storage that was copied (rsync) from one computer with one user to another computer with another user. Using ACL's I had made certain that both users could access the library and that worked.
But somehow my last couple of actions have damaged this setup and I don't know how and I don't know how to get a working setup back.
The setup normally was that ~/Music/iTunes for users was a symlink to /Users/Shared/iTunes. Thought it says shared, it is just used by that one user. I have located that on /Users/Shared because the home directories are protected with FileVault and I did not want to burden FileVault with the entire iTunes library. This worked fine.
On the laptop (which was my main iTunes workhorse) I had a rsync command to sync my iTunes stuff to a server (as backup) as Portable Home DIrectories would not sync it as it was located outside the home directory. This worked for years.
Now, instead I want to move this library to another dedicated server account (music) which is then shared to the laptop/desktops using Home Sharing. This I created and it worked. A few weeks ago I migrated from an old 10.5 Server to a new 10.6 Server and it still worked.
Now, yesterday, I decided to clean stuff up. Originally I had been using my self-compiled rsync that could handle extended attributes (from the official rsync distribution). But I noticed that some songs were not synced to the server. So, I tried Apple's own rsync and that did better, it synced all kinds of files that were missing on the server end. I used ditto and rsync to move stuff around on my machines with the goal to have the iTunes folder on /Users/Shared/iTunes owned by user music but through ACL's also accessible for other users in case I had to move stuff there from other machines.
Now, today I started up iTunes as user music on the Server and though my whole library is visible and all my playlists and smart playlists and settings are there, every song has an exclamation mark because iTunes cannot find it. If I locate the individual songs it works fine, but then iTunes cannot find the rest on the basis of that. And locating thousands of tracks by hand is not an option.
Starting over again also seems problematic. I can start again, but them I lose all my playlists and smart playlists etc.
Any tips on what might work to get this broken setup repaired?

This solved my problem:
- Remove rsynced iTunes directory and re-rsync from other computer
(This this not help, but maybe without it the rest would not have helped)
- Remove iTunes Preferences
- Restart iTunes
(Now it worked again, I had to make a few fixes)
- Deauthorize and reauthorize computer
- Reconnect to iTunes Store account
- Reset preferences
Message was edited by: Gerben Wierda

Exclamation marks prevent CD burning. Why is this happening?

Hello:
Here's the problem...
When I bring up a Smart Playlist to burn to CD (R or R+W), the following happens:
1. If I uncheck a few songs, the exclamation mark shows up and won't go away.
2. When I insert the blank CD, most of the songs get hit with the exclamation mark. When I click for more info, it tells me that the song is not recognized. It also tells me to play the song, but iTunes won't let me play it.
3. When I restart iTunes, all the exclamation marks are gone, but as soon as I insert a blank CD, the above happens all over again.
4. The thing is, 99% of my music on iTunes has been downloaded from my CD collection, so there should be no issues with security.
What gives?
My iPod, which is still under warranty, and is working fine and will download from iTunes...even tracks that are saddld with the exclamation mark.
My computer is a PC (see below). All the drivers are up-to-date, as is iTunes.
Here are my CD diagnostics:
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
FUJITSU LifeBook P7010
iTunes 6.0.5.20
CD Driver 2.0.4.3
CD Driver DLL 2.0.3.2
LowerFilters: PxHelp20 (2.0.0.0), drvmcdb (1.0.0.1), Pfc (2.5.0.204), sscdbhk5 (1.0.0.1),
UpperFilters: GEARAspiWDM (2.0.4.3),
Video Driver: Intel(R) 82852/82855 GM/GME Graphics Controller\Intel(R) 82852/82855 GM/GME Graphics Controller
Found aspi32 running.
IDE\DiskFUJITSUMHV2080AT______________________00000096, Bus Type ATA, Bus Address [0,0]
USBSTOR\DiskMaxtor_OneTouch_II____023g, Bus Type USB
IDE\CdRomMATSHITADVD-RAM_UJ-822S________________1.01___, Bus Type ATA, Bus Address [0,0]
If you have multiple drives on the same IDE or SCSI bus, these drives may interfere with each other.
Some computers need an update to the ATA or IDE bus driver, or Intel chipset. If iTunes has problems recognizing CDs or hanging or crashing while importing or burning CDs, check the support site for the manufacturer of your computer or motherboard.
Current user is administrator.
F: MATSHITA DVD-RAM UJ-822S, Rev 1.01
Media in drive is blank.
Get drive speed succeeded.
The drive CDR speeds are: 4 8 12 16 24.
The drive CDRW speeds are: 4.
The drive DVDR speeds are: 4.
The drive DVDRW speeds are: 4.
The last failed audio CD burn had error code -128(0xffffff80). It happened on drive F: MATSHITA DVD-RAM UJ-822S on CDR media at speed 0X.

Matthew,
The problem is that when I try play the song/tune/file that has the exclamation mark, iTunes skips right over it, sometimes adding exclamation marks to a whole bunch of songs.
The marked songs go away if I close and reopen iTunes. They also copy to my iPod, but if I try to play the files, the marks retuen.
It's weird that this happens to random files/artists. And all have been downloaded from my original music CDs.
(FYI: it doesn't seem to happen with podcasts.)

No iTunes exclamation marks, but iTunes still says 70 songs are missing

Hi all,
I have had this problem for a while now and haven't found it addressed anywhere online (tried searching in this forum as well as other forums through Google Search for quite a while).
Here is the issue:
My music library occasionally shows exclamation marks due to me having moved some file or folder around. I am a very organized person, so I always make sure to locate all files and make all of the exclamation marks disappear. I go through my whole music library (a little over 3000 files) until I make sure there are no more exclamation marks. As I am on the last exclamation mark, and I am 100% sure I have checked all of the files and there are no other exclamation marks except for that one, iTunes still says that it wasn't able to find 70 songs in the dialog box after it has located the one with the last exclamation mark.I double-check and triple-check, but I am totally not able to locate any other exclamation marks after that final one.
What is going on here? Why does iTunes claim songs are missing when there are no exclamation marks?
Please don't suggest that I repopulate my library by deleting and then re-adding the songs to fix this issue. I am not willing to do that as it will lose my library, which is a highly customized one (not all songs on my drive are included, only the ones I want to have on my iPhone).
Looking forward to hearing any other suggestions.
Thanks guys!

Lost & Found Playlists
Create a playlist called Found, select everything in Music and drag it into the Found playlist (it may take some time to count the tracks that are to be dropped). Create a smart playlist called Lost matching All the rules Playlist is Music and Playlist is not Found. Your lost tracks will be in this playlist.
If the missing files can be tracked down are in vaguely standard artist & album folder I have a tool called FindTracks that could help repair the broken links. Alternatively if you just want to remove them then in the Lost playlist use Ctrl+A followed by Shift+Delete.
I assume you've determined that these links must be in music rather than say podcasts or audiobooks? Widen the search if required.
For the long run why not make a playlist for what goes on the iPhone and then import all of your media to the library?
tt2

Deleting Songs with Exclamation Mark (!) in Bulk

I have hundreds of songs, all (I think) duplicates that have an exclamation mark in the left most column. All these need to be deleted - is there a quick way of doing this or do they all have to be done manually.
I can't work out how to order the first column to put them all together. And I realise they represent songs that iTunes can't find.
Thanks...

You can do this with a script called itunesremovenotfound which you can find here:
http://home.comcast.net/~teridon73/itunesscripts/
Or if you prefer to say in iTunes, iT can be done with a combination of playlists:
Create new regular playlist – Playlist1
Select whole library and drag to Playlist1
Create new Smart Playlist with the rule: Playlist is not Playlist1
This playlist should contain all the dead tracks
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=5696793#5696793
Once you have all the dead tracks in a playlist, they can be deleted together.

Copying Smart Playlist

Is there any way to copy a smart playlist? Not the music it contains, but it's parameters.
I want to make smart playlists with similar parameters without having to make each one separately?
Like a basic "duplicate smart playlist" would suffice.
Any tips?
Thanks.

For those who've said that this works, please can you check whether it works for you if the playlist being exported/imported is based on another playlist?
For example, I have numerous playlists that build upon one another, with criteria such as "playlist is xxx" and/or "playlist is not yyy" (along with other conditions).
If I export and re-import all of these (i.e. ensuring that I've included all of the dependencies) either into the same library or into a new blank library, then I get the little exclamation mark by each one - and upon editing the criteria find that every one has changed to refer to the default "Music" playlist... which obviously then breaks all of the processing.
I have an XML file of all smart playlist criteria (extracted using Doug's ever-useful script - http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=exportsmartcriteria) if it would help anyone to test/debug what's going on.
(Hope this isn't hijacking the thread too much - I have the same question as the OP, but the answers provided don't seem to work for me...)
Cheers,
Mark P.

HT1801 Just wondering, does iTunes update my Smart playlist with new songs?

Does iTunes update my Smart playlist with new songs each time I download it or do I have to manually update it myself? If I do, can someone walk me through it. Thanks a bunch

Yes that should work.
Are you using an "Artist is ..." rule? If so, and if new stuff by onerepublic isn't showing up in the list, check the Artist name on the new songs to make sure it's exactly matching the one in your rule.
For example, I've got music in my library (by the same people) under the artist names Godspeed You Black Emperor! and Godspeed You! Black Emperor ... (different position of the "!") If I set up a smart playlist based on:
Artist is Godspeed You Black Emperor!
It doesn't catch the songs with an Artist name of "Godspeed You! Black Emperor".
To get all the songs showing in a smart playlist, I'd need to adjust the Artist name on one or the other sets of songs so it matches a rule. (Haven't done that myself yet for GYBE, because I haven't worked out where the exclamation mark is actually supposed to go.)

Smart playlists don't sync onto iPhone 6, and some other serious problems

Am syncing my music library via cable from a Mac Book iTUnes library onto the iPhone. The songs are on the phone, but
- many songs are duplicated and greyed out
- some songs don't sync at all and have a "download from the cloud" symbol next to them
- some songs are greyed out AND have a "download from the cloud" symbol next to them
- none of my roughly 30 smart playlists and one regular playlist are synced, There are only two standard entries "Genius Playlis" and "New Playlist".
- have tried manually syncing playlists by deselecting "sync all" and just checking one to be synced, but it won't sync either
- there is a mismatch in song count. ITunes on the Mac has 1415 songs, iTunes n the iPHone has 1024 songs
What's going on?????

Tried all the solutions but later found that the problem was related to iTunes being unable to find the link to the original file.
In iTunes, click on the Music icon at top left of screen, which should bring up the list of your music, artist, album etc.if you see an exclamation mark next to each file, it may be that the link to the location of your music file is lost. You need to right click on the track name and click GET INFO, then search through your computer to find the location of the missing file. I did this for a few tracks and then iTunes helpfully (?) asked if i would like it to do the rest of my music for me.
Then went back t iTunes and SYNCED as normal. I am not a techo type but hope this is helpful for others. Happy New Year

Music is not playing on ipod 80gig on pc or head phones, an exclamation mark does show

I have an older generation Ipod 80 gig...some 13500 songs are currently not playing through head phones when I select say an album. It just flips from one to the next to the next song as listed in the album. The same happens if I select a playlist.
If I try to open a song whilst the ipod is connected to my windows pc the song does not play - an exclamation mark comes up against the file selected.
How can I get my ipod to return to playing the songs within.
Thanks

I have a similar problem.
I just bought 2 albums (Pirates of the Caribean III and Linkin Park - Mintues to midnight) and every time I want to play one of the songs it asks me for my account password. After entering it, it says this computer was activated. But it still doesn't work!!
If I want to sync I get the same message:
"Some of the items in the iTunes library were not copied to the iPod because they cannot be played on this iPod"
I've also bought a iPod-Game (Mahjong) and have the same problem...
I have a 80GB video iPod.
Laptop Windows XP Pro

Exclamation marks in smart playlists

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