Home sharing icon not visible

Question

I have two computers in my home and i am trying to share files between the two. but when i try to use home sharing it doesn't work. home sharing is on and it has the look for shared libraries checked and everything but the home sharing icon on the left side bar isn't visible. help!

Answer 1

the following is for iTunes 9 but, except the colors, applies to iTunes 10 too:
what you want to see in iTunes is this (view from my MBP's iTunes seeing the library on my Mini)
if you then click on the house icon, it will change to this and the shared library will load. at that point, two buttons will appear in the lower right corner of the iTunes window, being settings and import
now you should be able to import any content from any shared library by selecting the content and clicking on import.
if the icon looks like this , home sharing has not been set up correctly.
in order for home sharing to work
(a) iTunes on all machines must be authorized for the same iTunes store account
(b) all machines must be on the same network
(c) all machines must have access to the internet.
if none of the above makes a difference, try turning home sharing off on all computers, then turning it back on.
these reads will be useful: one and two.
JGG