I get a red circle with a slash through it when trying to move music into folders.

Question

I had to reformat my laptop hard drive.  I moved everything to an external hard drive, and then brought it back after the reformat.  I did something wrong, so all the folders are gone.  I can create new playlist folders now, but when I try to move the music over, as soon as I get in the area with the playlist folders, it gives me the red circle with the slash through it, and stops me form dropping the songs in the folders.
I am logged into my account and the computer is authorized to my iTunes.  Not sure where to go from here, other than the Apple store.

Answer 1

iTunes doesn't pay much attention to file and folder names with one minor exception. On import any untagged files will be given their filename as their track name.
You can drag a folder full of files onto a playlist and all the tracks will be added to the playlist, having first been added to the library if iTunes isn't already aware of them.
When you add files to iTunes from outside the iTunes Media folder and the option Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library is enabled then copies will be created, and iTunes connected to those. If you subsequently import the same folder you will create duplicate files. If your files start life inside the iTunes Media folder, or that option is disabled, then they can be imported again without creating duplicates. However, if your files start life inside the iTunes Media folder and the option Keep iTunes Media folder organised is enabled, then once you have added the folder to the library the files inside it will probably be rearranged.
In the long term your library will be easier to maintain if all the files are inside the iTunes Media folder. It is probably easier to let iTunes manage them unless you are really particular about the layout or are importing files without tags such as wav, in which case I have some scripts that can extract useful information about the file from the filename and path provided iTunes doesn't get to throw it away first.
If your main aim is to rebuild some existing playlists, which exist by dint of all the files for each playlist being in separate folders, and you want to avoid creating duplicates, then try this.
Create a new empty playlist, select the music folder and put it into date added order.
Move all the files into the Automatically add to iTunes folder.
Select all the recently imported files, drag and drop them onto the new playlist.
Repeat until all files are added
tt2