I can't get my music to play in my itunes. It comes with a exclamation mark next to the song numbers and says that the original songs can't be played cause cant find the file. How do I get the songs back? (I found the files)

Question

I can't get my music to play in my itunes. It comes with a exclamation mark next to the song numbers and says that the original songs can't be played cause cant find the file. How do I get the songs back? (I found the files

Answer 1

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.
If you use an external drive, a change in drive letter is a common cause and you need to change it back.
AS a way of working out what has happened, right click on a track and select the summary tab (you will have to go past an error message). The summary tab will tell you where iTunes thinks the track is located. How does that compare with where the track actually is?
The xml library file is not used by iTunes, it is created to allow other programs to access the library. You can recreate the iTl file from the xml file, but there is no point if the location of the files is wrong.
There is a simple way of getting you music back in iTunes, but it loses all playlists counts and rating. To do this drag iTunes library.itl and iTunes Library.xml to your desktop. Then open iTunes and an empty library is created. Add you iTunes Media folder to it.
If you can't work out what went wrong and how to fix it, you may have to do this.