How do you play music in itunes from an external drive?

if the library and itunes folder are on the external drive, how do you play the songs from there through a laptop? I have gotten that dreaded "original file not found" message over and over again. Thanks.

Hold down the Shift key while launching iTunes. You'll be given a dialog box where you can select the iTunes library you want to use. Navigate to and select the iTunes folder in it's new location.

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    Chris
    <Email Edited by Host>

    chrisfromgoodworth clatford wrote:
    How can I import music into iTunes from another media.
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    I want to run iTunes from my external drive, I have already made back ups of my library and media files but I can't figure out how to save iTunes to the external drive? When you download itunes it just automatically downloads to the computer. Can you even do this? If not, how can I use the saved info on my external drive (library and media files) with my itunes on the computer. The problem we are trying to solve is a lack of space on our computer and we want to free as much space as possible. Thanks!

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    How to open older version of iPhoto from an external drive. It won't let me open or upgrade to the latest version?

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  • How can I transfer music and iTunes from my mac to my iPhone?

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  • How do i move aperture library to from MBP external drive

    Perhaps I am not searching properly,but was unable to bring up a 2011 answer to this question. Does anyone have more current help than 2011?

    Thank you, léonie, for your extensive help. I do not wish to impose on you, but have answered the first part of your response below. If you                      were to continue helping, I would appreciate that greatly. I also hope continuing the conversation within the community this way is ok. If not please advise.
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  • How to play music in itunes from external drive without copying files

    Everytime I go to play a song in itunes, it imports it first. I am a DJ and don't want 200 gigs of music on my HD. There has to be some way to just play all of my songs off of my external HD w/o itunes importing the songs.
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    Thank you very much for your help. This is my first Mac and I am getting use to how it operates. SInce I have gotten It, I usually just click on the song from my external then itunes imports it then plays it.
    I use Serato when DJing which allows me to just access my external and play from there, which is what you suggested doing by creating a itunes library on my external.
    I will create a library on my external and do like you suggested. That seems like it would solve all of my problems. I am using the instructions from here: http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/ to do it. Seems like it should be pretty straight forward.
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  • How do I transfer music in iTunes from one computer to another computer?

    I have an iTunes Library full of music in a laptop with Windows and I want to transfer it to my desktop computer, a Dell with Windows. I've heard you can import songs from your iPod that you got from one computer to another, I'd also like to know how to do that, because I think that might be the only way.

    You can use your iPod as a hard drive and move the ITunes folder:
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    iPod Access Mac and Windows Versions
    YamiPod Mac and Windows Versions
    PodUtil Mac and Windows Versions
    iPodCopy Mac and Windows Versions
    PodPlayer Windows Only
    iGadget Windows Only
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    Copying songs over a network to use with iTunes for Windows

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