How do i reinstall songs that have ! next to them, they're in my computer somewhere

Question

My Itune catalog has a number of songs with a ! next to it. I recently put some songs on a mp3 player, not all the songs that I put on the mp3 player have the !, but some do, one day there will be a ! next to a song, and then a day later gone.?? When I synch my IPOD the songs are there on my IPOD, I am unable to do anything with the selected songs, like playlist, or add coverflow, on my computer. very frustrating.  I have found the songs in my media player, but can only listen to them or playlist, then burn to disc, that really seem like the hard way to reinstall these songs. Any suggestions would help. thanks kt

Answer 1

This 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