Help! Itunes library problems of all sorts...
I've been exhaustively searching for ways to merge an old library with play counts etc from a backup to my new itunes library. That still is one question (I could find help for two computers, but couldn't figure out how to use two files on the same computer-ie back up and the active library) however now in trying to do that I have really screwed things up I think.
Here are all my problems- the most recent being that I ended up trying "import playlist" with my xml file...which resulted in a ton of duplicates and still no play counts etc. So now I am hoping to back up to my last library. I had been "exporting library" to back it up before trying these things...
however the problem I was having trying the "option" trick is still in effect. Which is that I do the option, I pick "choose the library" and then all of my .xml files are grey and unchoosable.
I think that I could choose the itunes library file that does NOT say .xml from my computer-- however, I had just created the whole library from my external harddrive, and I don't find one of those files there, only on my mac directly. So will this file be the one that has the thousands of songs I just spent the last days importing? (I did that before realizing the importance of the play count!).
My harddrive crashed before all of this, so I just have the backup file that is a grey square, not the color itunes logo that I am seeing on my computer now (and this is what isn't letting me choose it).
So I guess here are my questions:
Why can't I choose the .xml files?
Does the "export library" actually create a useable backup? If so, how do I restore it?
Then if I can fix this mess- my original goal- how to keep my newest library, while importing play counts/info from a backup .xml file.
MUCH thanks to anyone who can offer me some assistance!!!!!!!!
Or the other option I am wondering about is if I can take all of the info off of my ipod, and then sync that with the new library?
Or, if need be, erase the current library. take the info from the ipod to create the base library that would have my play counts etc. However, then I would need to merge that with my master music data files, and there would be no way at this point to know which are on the ipod and which are not- so I'd need to be able to merge without duplicates.
What would you all suggest??
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I just upgraded to iTunes 12 and had all sorts of problems. After several restores I seem to be able to sync my iPad with iTunes BUT I can't delete anything off my iPad from iTunes. Any ideas on what to do?
-Me again - it also won't upload the few new pictures I have on the computer onto the iPad without deleting all the photos that are already there....
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My itunes library has duplicated all of my music and would take me hours to delete one by one. What is a quick easy way to delete over 2,500 duplicates?
Apple's official advice 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.
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 of identical tracks 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. This can happen, for example, if you start iTunes with a disconnected external drive, then connect it, reimport from your media folder, then restart iTunes.
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. Please take note of the warning to backup your library before deduping, whether you do so by hand or using my script, in case something goes wrong.
(If you don't see the menu bar press ALT to show it temporarily or CTRL+B to keep it displayed)
tt2 -
I have all my music on an external hard drive. I just transferred all my files to a new hard drive . How do I sync all my files with my itunes library without losing all my playlists etc and keep everything intact?
Launch iTunes with the Option key held down, click on Choose Library, and specify it. If the external drive doesn't contain the iTunes database files, create a new library there and import that music.
If the library contains any rented movies, they won't play on a different computer.
(109334) -
I plugged my iPod into the computer and it says that my iPod is synced with another iTunes library, but it's not. So all my music and apps are gone. What can I do to remind the computer its the right iTunes library and get all my stuff back?
Same as you would if you bought a pc; copy everything from your old computer to your new one. Then you can just sync everything from the new computer, as you did with the old one.
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I currently have a mini ipod but hubby is buying me a ipod touch for my birthday soon. Will I be able to use my current itunes library and transfer all my songs to the ipod touch? Or can I only have one ipod attached to one library?
You can transfer all your songs.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1495 -
My itunes library has duplicated "ALL" my files with their individual iclouds. How do I delete them all in one single swipe rather than delete each one individually?
Try Edit > Preferences > Store and untick Show iTunes in the Cloud Purchases. With luck it should be OK if you turn it on again.
tt2 -
I highlight "genre" in my itunes library and it is sorted thus. The secondary sort is automatically "artist". I want the secondary sort to be "album". How do I accomplish this?
Can't do it.
You can use the browser (iTunes menu view > Browser) select a genre then sort by Album. -
ITunes Library "damaged"? All my songs are gone now! =(
So i start itunes the other day, and it gives me a message that my itunes library has been "damaged" and now all my songs/playlists/purchased music is gone. The files are still there in their folders, but gone from itunes.
I did some research online on how to fix this, yet i still have some questions......
first, why does/did this happen in the first place!??!!?!?
second, how can i fix the original file so i can restore my playlists and songs? i know i can rename a file from the previous librarys, but it ***** for me because i just recently added to my playlists and purchased new music and do not want to go back to where i was at about a month ago.
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Thankyou.Sorry, but i had the same problem & I had to manually re-import all of my songs & videos & re-tag them all & re-organize in playlists and everything! Now if there is another way around it, I have no idea. It happened to me because iTunes froze on my Mac & I had to force quit. When I re-opened iTunes I was in the same boat you are..... I know that isn't any help, but I feel your pain!
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Random iTunes library problem or bug with duplicates
iTunes (Mac) spontaneously creates duplicate songs and does some unusual things in the process. The duplicate songs only appear in my library, the music media remains intact most of the time. Sometimes iTunes moves one or two songs from the same recording to a separate folder and puts in outside the iTunes Media folder.
The duplicate songs that appear in the library appear randomly. Sometimes both dup songs play fine, even though there is only one source file for the song. Sometimes only one plays, so I have to delete the one with the exclamation mark. Often one of the 2 dup songs has the wrong artwork. This wouldn't be a big issue if I didn't have such a large volume of music and this wasn't happening to hundreds and hundreds of songs, which need to be dealt with manually one at a time.
I have several music folders (CD , Downloads) inside the Master iTunes Media folder on the ext HD
In iTunes Perfs I have enabled "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" and "Copy files to iTunes Media folder." This setup worked fine in the past, before 2010.
I've repaired permissions regularly and have repaired the Boot HD.
I first starting noticing this problem at some point in 2010 while using iTunes 9. Upgrading to iTunes 10 has not helped.
Any ideas on what's going on or what I might try to fix the problem?
Is this a bug in iTunes?
If I re-installed iTunes and could return to an earlier version which one should I use ?
Specs. iTunes 10.3.1 with 350 GB of music on an external HDThanks for taking the time to respond to my question.
I need some clarification on your instructions. Once I have Exported my Library to the desktop and moved my iTunes folder to the desktop I can't proceed as you suggest.
When I open iTunes it opens the original library full of all my music. If I launch iTunes (while holding down C key) I can create a new empty iTunes Library inside the Music folder.
If I try to import (open) the original Library.xml file on the desktop nothing happens. If your saying I need to import all the music in my iTunes folder (inside the Music folder) I can't do that since all my music is on an external HD.
Are you saying I need to reimport the entire contents (all the music) in my iTunes Media folder?
I thought your solution was aiming to simply rebuild the directory structure while leaving the original music media alone.
Thanks for helping clarify.
Or could you point me to a support.apple.com/kb article? -
Help: iTunes wants to delete all my music and videos off of my iPhone!
I usually keep the option to manually manage music and videos on my iPhone. I only use 1 pc to transfer music and movies to and from my iPhone. Recently for some reason when I launched iTunes, an error message kept poping up repeatedly saying "The iTunes Library file cannot be saved." I fixed the error message by adjusting the user access privileges to my music folder.
Now my music library is completely empty in iTunes, but that shouldn't be a problem because I manually manage my music and videos. However, when I checked the iPhone page in iTunes, the checkbox for manually manage music and videos is unchecked.
So I went to go check the check box so that I can continue to add some more music and videos to my iPhone, however a message box pops up saying:
"The iPhone "my iPhone" is synced with another iTunes library. Do you want to erase this iPhone and sync with this iTunes library?"
I have about 12 gigs worth of music and videos which I have carefully hand picked over a period of about 3 months and now iTunes wants to delete all of it because it thinks I want to "sync with another library". I only hope someone can understand how frustrating this is for me. All I want to do is continue to be able to add music and videos to my iPhone without having to erase months worth of work putting the current music I have on there. Can anyone help me?Thanks for your reply. I don't keep all of my music in the iTunes' designated music folder. I don't like the way iTunes reorganizes my songs and I keep all my music in my own self organized music folders as I don't use iTunes as my primary media application. Not to mention allot of my files come from all different corners of my computer's hard drive. It would literally take months to go through over 20 gigs of media files to pick out the songs I have in my iPhone library to rebuild an iTunes library. Like i said, I don't even use iTunes other than to transfer files to my iPhone. I thought the purpose of manually managing the files was so you don't have to sync it with the iTunes library but now it won't give my that option without requiring me to delete everything on my phone I worked so hard on.
What I don't understand is logically or technically why iTunes HAS to delete all the content off of my iphone. Who's decision in the Apple's software engineering department was to require the one's iPhone to be erased if someone loses their iTunes library? Its frustrating because it makes no sense and I feel as if the software is punishing me for reasons I don't understand by threatening to delete all my content off my phone. Is there absolutely no way to transfer my music to my iPhone without deleting everything currently on and completely rebuilding my music library from scratch? -
My desktop PC recently crashed and I'm trying to recapture all of my iTunes library playlist and songs. I was able to successfully capture the library, however when I tried to play a song, all have the exclamation mark "!" on them and ask that I locate the song. I successfully located some, but there has to be an automatic way to do this, rather than finding each one. I have thousands of songs located in multiple folders of my exteernal hard drive and need a way to find all songs automatically. Can someone help? Thanks!
This "original file cannot be found" thing happens if the file is no longer where iTunes expects to find it. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the file, or that the drive it lives on has had a change of drive letter. It is also possible that iTunes has changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout,or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place.
Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to get info, then cancel when asked to try to locate the track. Look on the summary tab for the location that iTunes thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drive(s). Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions.
Alternatively, as long as you can find a location holding the missing files, then you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes .
tt2 -
I'm sure this is a common issue, and I've google-searched for solutions but I cannot find a straight forward answer anywhere. I really hope an expert here can help me out.
I purchased an iPad last year and synced it with my iTunes library on my old PC laptop. Well, my PC laptop harddrive crashed last week and I cannot access anything on my laptop anymore. I did not make a back-up for my PC harddrive either. I know, next time I should make a back-up and I will. But that's irrelevant. The PC is gone now.
I replaced my PC this week with a brand new Mac Book Pro. Excited about my new purchase, I quickly hooked up my iPad with the hopes of easily transferring and accessing my iPages, iNumbers, and other productivity iPad apps seamlessly to my new beautiful Mac Book Pro. But now I've run into the nightmarish dilemma of not being able to sync my beloved Ipad with my new MAC without getting the warning that basically says "your iPad is already synced with another iTunes Library. You may only sync to one iTunes Library at a time. You will lose all your data if you sync to this new computer."
Can someone give me a straightfoward answer as to how I can sync my iPad with my new iTunes Library on my new Mac Book Pro without losing any of the apps that I previously purchased? I want to be able to access the apps I downloaded on my iPad on my Mac Book Pro.
Thanks so much!!!!!!how to use iTunes to sync is in the
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes
For MacBook Pro community and OS X
MacBook Pro
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro
https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os?view=discussions
http://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro
While it isn't as easy to just use a Mac iDevice as media storage as Android and Windows, you can add documents and such like Word, PDF and others manually in iTunes to have them sync as well.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1386
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1351
They are all there searchable from Bing, Google or every Mac product has a support page.
http://www.apple.com/support/ -
Long story short: A sequence of bad decisions on my part caused me to delete my entire iTunes library (song files, apps, itl file, everything in the music folder). Another bad decision left me without a Time Machine backup of this folder. I have a backup of my music and I can redownload audiobooks from Audible, so I'm not stressed out about my audio.
The problem is my iPhone and iPad. I've downloaded >400 apps and have over 100 on each device. How can I begin syncing them to this new, app-free library without having every app deleted (along with their organization, settings and related-documents). I use these devices heavily so this is a huge conundrum for me.
The next step would seem to be to restore my audio files to a new iTunes library, but how do I then sync my devices to that library without wiping out every app on my iDevices? I'm a pretty technical user and am willing to hand edit the ITL files if necessary. I think that i _may_ be able to find a version of the itl file that's about a year old from an ancient backup. But that still doesn't solve the whole problem.
Thank you,
SpencerI managed to lose an earlier reply I'd started before you came back with your "solved" so I didn't bother to retype it.
It went something like this:
You should be able to recover the media with the tips in this post from forum regular Zevoneer but I'm not sure what the implications are for your application settings. You can probably transfer your purchases into an authorised library, backup the device, recover any other media using third party tools, then restore the device from the backup.
The older .itl file is useful however as iTunes should see this as the "home" library for your device which will allow you to preserve the application settings. (.itl file? Mac? I assume the library has migrated from PC to Mac at some point). Any files in the Previous iTunes Libraries folder or did you kill those as well? The most recent of these would be the best place to start.
And no, the .itl file is not editable by mortals...
Once you've restored the media from backups or recovered whatever else you useful can from the device, the scripts MusicFolder Files Not Added and Super Remove Dead Tracks should help get the library up to speed with the contents of the media folder.
tt2 -
I have a laptop and the hard drive had to be replaced because it WILL NOT work (This broken hard drive will be refered to as "HD1" from now on). So I had no choice but to have HD1 replaced with a better hard drive (the new one will be refered to as "HD2" from now on). I had HD1 for about 5 years, but what is stuck on HD1 is my itunes library will all of my music, like I said before HD1 will not work so I cannot retrieve any of my itunes data, or any data to be exact. But also, my data that was synced in HD1's itunes library is also on my ipod touch, which is still functional for the time being. HD2 has been installed and working perfectly and I installed itunes on it as well. If I synced my ipod touch to HD2's itunes library, all of my music on the ipod touch will get deleted. What I'm trying to do is have all of my music on my ipod touch transfered to HD2's itunes library without having anything deleted.
Key things to remember:
-"HD1" is my broken hard drive
-"HD2" is my new and awesome hard drive
-I can't access HD1 at all because it doesn't work
-I have an ipod touch with all of HD1's music on it
-HD2 has an empty itunes library on it
-I need a way to transfer all the data on my ipod touch to HD2's itunes library without having anything deleted
Is there someone, anyone who can help me out with this?I think so when you sign in your itunes library with your apple id which you were using on HD1 the data will be transfered or simply use icloud.
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