Itunes 9.1.1 'File Could Not Be Found' Error

I'm sure I'm not the only one this is happening to and quite honestly this has got to be one of the most annoying things yet in the world of Itunes errors!
I ripped numerous CD's as well as added a bunch of existing files into my library. When I sync up at the end of it all I get a warning... XX amount of files could not be copied to my ipod because the file could not be found.
HEY ITUNES... YOU RIPPED THE G.D. CD SO IT MAKES SENSE THAT YOU'D KNOW WHERE THE FILE IS!
Is there any way around this issue that doesn't involve trying to delete and re-import a ridiculous amount of files? Am I waiting for Apple to get it's s**t together and patch it?
Any help would be super appreciated!

Fantastic, thanks so much for figuring this out.
I was having the same problem, with the same three files failing every time I tried to sync my iPhone. But iTunes could locate them fine via Show in Finder. Even tried making copies of the files, deleting them old ones (from both my Library and the machine), and then importing the copied files back into iTunes. And the same "file could not be found" message still came up, every sync, now on the cloned files.
Turning off the AAC conversion made it go away. Completed sync on the first try, no errors.
Thanks again!

Similar Messages

I have moved my file from my old computer. Now that I am trying to play songs and movies iTunes says the original file could not be found. How do I reverse this problem?

I have moved my file from my old computer. Now that I am trying to play songs and movies iTunes says the original file could not be found. How do I reverse this problem?

Put the files back where iTunes expects them to be.

Deleting Duplicates creates "original file could not be found" error

I am not running iTunes 8.2.1.6 and trying to delete duplicates that were created as I tried to move my iTunes Library to other drives. Now I have many duplicates - sometimes 3-4 of the same song. If I delete them I begin to get "original file could not be found" error when trying to play the one version I kept.
Is there some magic to which one I should keep?

iTunes doesn't help you distinguish between duplicates that are two identical copies of the same file or two separate references to the one original file. If the later is the case and you delete any reference allowing the source file to be deleted then ALL other references to the file become invalid. You can either check the properties of each file before deleting and choose whether to keep or delete accordingly or use itunesremoveduplicates from Teridon's iTunes Scripts.
tt2

After upgrade, iTunes complaints with "original file could not be found"

After upgrading to 8.2.0.23, a large number of songs now have a ! in them and if I try to play them, iTunes will say with "The song xxx could not be used because the original file could not be found." This has happened to me before but never to this large number of files.
If it were only a handful of songs it wouldn't be an issue because iTunes allows me to locate it manually, which for first time, iTunes opens the dialog in the directory where the file is. I can click on the mp3 file and that's it. Problem is that from the on, the dialog opens in the same directory as the first song, which makes it very hard to navigate to the directory where the second song is (unless it's the same album of course). Multiply that by 1000 and it's an impossible task.
I've found that the problem is neither the itl file nor the xml file. I already tried the previous itl file and the problem persists.
After comparing the files that are OK with those missing in the .xml file, I found that iTunes is somehow messing up the location tag for files with underscores in the filename. For example, 01_mysong.mp3 gets replaced to 01%20-%20mysong.mp3 in the location tag in the xml file. If use iTunes to locate the file, which as I mentioned above fixes the issue, the location tag gets updated to the correct filename and a bunch of hex numbers get added to the comments tag.
Now, if I exit iTunes and change the location tag to the correct filename in the xml file with a text editor, iTunes magically messes up the tag again when it comes up.
I tried unchecking the "Keep iTunes Music folder organized" but that didn't help.
At first I thought it was an issue with the comments tag and that only mp3 files downloaded from Amazon had the problems. It seems that ALL those songs have the problem but there are a few other songs I got from the iTunes store that are also messed up.
I have not moved any songs at all, this just happened all by itself after upgrading.
I also tried re-adding the folders where all the Amazon mp3 files are, but this created duplicate entries in the library. Unfortunately, even though the new entries do play, they don't have ratings or play count.
Is there any way I could fix this without losing my ratings and play counts and without having to manually fix every song one by one?
I'll appreciate any hint you can provide.
Thanks

I have the same problem except almost every song I bought from Itunes has this problem. Not only that, but somehow some of the music, about $125 worth has been deleted form my 3 back up discs. This is only happening with my purchases and not any songs I uploaded from cd. How on earth did this happen, and how did it wipe clean 3 different back ups? I have found some of the music where it belongs, but like I said some of them are gone, gone, gone. I run three different back ups and they are on 24/7. Where is all of this music? I still have it on my ipod, but it will not load back into itunes the way purchases used to. Some of the music is purchased straight to my ipod touch, but shouldn't i be able to reload them into itunes? I spent 3 hours going 1 song at a time reloading them from their original location. But I cannot locate about $125 worth of music that I purchased from itunes. I have 6 macs in my family and preach the good news to all who will listen about hows macs are flawless. Now I have egg all over my face and have thrown away a nice sum of money on missing music. Please help!

ITunes message "the original file could not be found"

I recently consolidated my music files to an external hard drive using the "consolidate" feature in iTunes. I imported the music library files and everything seemed to be good. I even did it a second time on to another external hard drive that I back up my entire computer to so that I actually had two copies of my music. At the time I checked that I could access the music on either hard drive by picking the library on that respect external unit with the other drive turned off. Both units were disconnected from the computer for several days and when I went to play iTunes I get the message that "the original file could not be found". It doesn't matter which hard drive library I try to access the result is the same.
I have exported the library text file to Access and there is no information in the "Location" column. It would appear that this information was not saved or lost somehow. The tech article on "Recreating the iTunes Library file" didn't work as iTunes stated the same thing, "the original file could not be found".
All my music is still there, iTunes library file just lost the information as to the location of the individual files. Anybody know of a way or a program to reestablish those locations with out going through 10,000 songs one by one to reestablish its location?
HP Windows XP

I am having some difficulty understanding exactly what set up your have and are you on iTunes 7? You don’t need to use consolidate to get your library onto an external drive if you are on 7, there is an easier way.
There are two important considerations, the location of the library files and the location of the iTunes Music folders. You have iTunes Music folders on two different external drives, but what about the library files – iTunes Library.itl and iTunes Music Library.xml?
Do you have those on the internal drive in My Music\iTunes, or do you have separate copies on the two external drives in iTunes folders there? Something like
X:\Music\iTunes\ containing the libraries and X:\Music\iTunes\iTunes Music for the music files.
The more precise information about how you have things set up the better, and what is the location of your iTunes Music folder as set in Edit>Preferences>Advanced>General.
What method were you using to try to connect to the music on the two drives, and do they always have the same drive letters?
In general terms you get exclamation marks against your tracks for the following 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

Original File Could Not be Found error

Hi, I'm sure that I'm missing something obvious here, but seem to be stumped. I recently bought a new iMac and migrated my Itunes folder and other stuff to the new iMac from my old ibook and external drive (location of old itunes folder). Everything was fine for a month or so and then the trouble started. Now when I click on a song within itunes, I get an error message state that the original file could not be found and asking me if I want to locate it. If I navigate to my itunes folder and double click on that song (file), it plays just fine.
How can I get Itunes to recognize where all of the songs in my library are?
I tried opening itunes while holding the Option key and choosing the itunes library location to be where it is, but I still get the same error.
I'm not sure what I did to create this error. The only thing that I can think of is that I synched my old shuffle for the first time since I bought the new imac. My iphone, which I have synched numerous times, seems to work just fine (songs play fine, the appropriate files are synched to it).
Any hints greatly appreciated.

No, I haven't found an answer. Even more bizarre, it now seems that some of the songs in the library don't generate the error message while others do. Does not seem to be any discernible pattern (e.g. purchased, artist, etc.)

File could not be found Error

Just thought I'd mention something I've run into recently with my old Shuffle.
I have things set up to be manually managed because Syncing is a mess dealing with all my iDevices so I've grown accustomed to dragging over music manually to my 2nd Gen Shuffle but I've run into this error when doing so:
"iTunes could not copy "song name" to the iPod "iPod name" because the file could not be found."
Which is bizarre because the song is already in iTunes. The way to fix it is to turn OFF "Convert higher bit rate songs to 128 kbps AAC".
It only happens on some songs and I can't find a commonality between them at all. Also I've noticed that when iTunes throughs up this error the Shuffle mounts on the desktop briefly then unmounts. I have it set to not use it as a disk in iTunes.
Has anyone else seen or dealt with this error?

Fantastic, thanks so much for figuring this out.
I was having the same problem, with the same three files failing every time I tried to sync my iPhone. But iTunes could locate them fine via Show in Finder. Even tried making copies of the files, deleting them old ones (from both my Library and the machine), and then importing the copied files back into iTunes. And the same "file could not be found" message still came up, every sync, now on the cloned files.
Turning off the AAC conversion made it go away. Completed sync on the first try, no errors.
Thanks again!

My daughter was playing on my iphone 3gs and now it wont sync on itunes, it says a file could not be found.........please helppp!!!!!!

i dont know what to do

Did you delete the files from your computer?
BTW, you've posted in the iTunes Match forum. Is your question related to that service?

"original file could not be found" problem

Please help.
I have a home network of 4 PCs. One PC is being used somewhat like a server ie. all of our MP3s are on that PC in a shared folder. Somehow (my kids won't admit to it) the Microsoft firewall was modified not to allow file sharing. As a result, iTunes on my wife's PC became disassociated with the files on our "server" PC. I corrected the fire wall problem and my wife's PC can now see the shared folder but everytime she clicks on a song she gets the "original file could not be found" error with the exclamation point.
She has well of a 2,000 songs in her library and does not want to individually find (reattach) each one. Also, she does not want to reimport all of the MP3s into her library because a lot of the MP3s are music that she does not have in her library and does not want there.
My 2 kids' PCs have the same problem and of course their iTunes libraries have a different mix of music from the "server" PC.
Any ideas? TIA

hmm, did you change it yourself without restarting iTunes?
Because, when my external HD is not turned on before I start iTunes, I get all the ! not found which never fails to make me gasp in dismay.
But then I just close iTunes, start the exHD, re-open iTunes and everything is OK.
Tell me, do you happen to be in the practice of backing up the itl and xml files?
What are the iTunes library files?
If you have saved copies of those, you could just put them back in place, snip-snap, problem solved.

App store... bought an app, now it's gone... "the original file could not be found"

I purchased QuickOfficePro about a year ago. Today (after loaning my iPad to my daughter for a few weeks) I restored the iPad. Now QuickOffice Pro is gone. iTunes says "the original file could not be found".
What do I do now? I have the receeipt # on file.

Just discovered the app has been discontinued. Apparently now it's "free" but you are required to subscribe to Google Drive. It was great app, too bad...

There are about 8 songs in a playlist on itunes that are listed in the playlist but cannot be transferred to my ipod because it states: "..the original file could not be found." When I try to locate the song I get a list of the different music librar

There are about 8 songs on a playlist that are listed in the playlist library but when I try to transfer them to the playlist, it states that they can't be transferred because the original file could not be found. Then it asks, do you want to locate the file but when I try that I get a few libraries but am not sure how to locate the particular songs. Some of the songs were purchased and some were transferred from a CD. I have seen the same question asked on the help page but haven't found an answer.
Thanks.

Hi dones49,
It sounds like your issue here is that iTunes can not find the files for some of the songs you have brought into it. This happens occasionally even if the songs have not been moved from the location that iTunes places them on import or purchase. When you try to use the song, iTunes prompts you to find the file, as you have seen.
To find the file, use the information in this article to navigate through the iTunes media folders -
Locate and organize your iTunes files
If you are still unable to locate the files, you may need to download them from the iTunes store again, or rip them from your CDs. See this article for assistance with downloading your past purchases -
Download past purchases
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Best,
Brett L

I recently reset my computer and copy my music from an external hard drive to my itunes library. When I click on a song to play i get an error message that says " the song could not be used because the original file could not be found". need help

I recently reset my computer and copy my music from an external hard drive to my itunes library. When I click on a song to play i get an error message that says " the song could not be used because the original file could not be found". But when I have my external hard drive plug in the song will play with no problem. What do I need to do to play my music without having the external harddrive plug in ???????? Please help

Because the location for each song in your library is on your hard drive. If the hard drive isn't there, how can iTunes play it?
You'll have to move/copy the music from your hard drive to your computer's hard drive.
Basically, EASIEST way to do all this, if you don't care about your play counts, etc...
-Delete EVERYTHING from iTunes, so that your library is now empty.
-Go to "Advanced" inside of the "Preferences" window, found in the "Edit" drop-down. You can also access Preferences by pressing Ctrl+, (Press Ctrl and the comma key)
-Change your iTunes Media Folder Location to something simple, but on your computer. I use C:/iTunes. Make sure "Keep iTunes Media Folder Organized" and "Copy files to...." are both checked. You can close Preferences now.
-Now, drag and drop your music from your hard drive into your iTunes library. iTunes will automatically add the music to your library, as you would expect, and also creates a copy of each file to place into that iTunes Media Folder you just created.
Shouldn't have any more problems...

This is a new notification coming up with iTunes, why and how do I fix it? The song "Penny Lane" could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?

This is a new notification coming up with iTunes, why and how do I fix it?
The song “Penny Lane” could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?
Max

Hey xxCreepyFiaxx,
First, I would try the following suggested steps for when you don't see content in iTunes after updating:
Quit iTunes.
Download and install the latest version of iTunes.
Use the Finder (Mac) or Windows Explorer (Windows) to go to the iTunes folder that contains the iTunes library files:
Mac OS X
/Users/username/Music/iTunes/
Microsoft Windows Windows XP and Windows 2000
\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\
Microsoft Windows Windows Vista and Windows 7
\Users\username\Music\iTunes\
Drag the iTunes Library file from the above location to the Desktop.
Open the Previous iTunes Libraries folder in the iTunes folder.
Locate the file named iTunes Library YYYY-MM-DD where YYYY-MM-DD is the date you upgraded iTunes (Year-Month-Day).
Drag this file to the iTunes folder (the enclosing folder).
Rename this file to iTunes Library.
Open iTunes.
You should now see your missing content in iTunes.
via: No content shows up in iTunes after updating
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1967
If that doesn't resolve the issue, then I'd go through the steps in here:
iTunes: Finding lost media and downloads
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1408
Have a good one,
Delgadoh

I have a new hard drive as my old one crashed. Everything seemed to transfer fine except for my entire iTunes library. It shows all of my old songs, but when I click on one it states "the song could not be used as the original file could not be found

I have a new hard drive as my old one crashed. Everything seemed to transfer fine except for my entire iTunes library. It shows all of my old songs, but when I click on one it states "the song could not be used as the original file could not be found.would you like to locate it".
Either how do I locate it, and I've tried every trick I know, or how do I restore all of my songs from one of two sources. I have my old hard drive backedup on an external drive which should have all of my songs, and I have most of my songs on my old iPhone 3S which I'm using as a backup iPod.

The "missing file" error 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, one of its parent folders, or 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. In the case of a library moved from one system to another there are also potential permissions issues. See Repair security permissions for iTunes for Windows.
Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to Get Info, then click No when asked to try to locate the track. (Due to a bug in iTunes 12 you currently have to say No twice!) 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, a folder renamed, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions. If the difference between the two paths is an additional Music folder in one path then this is a layout issue. I can explain further if that is the case.
In some cases iTunes may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps with Get Info but this time click Locate and browse to the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links.
If another application like Windows Media Player has moved/renamed the files then the chances are that subtle differences in naming strategies will make it hard to restore the media to the precise path that iTunes is expecting. In such cases, as long as the missing files can be found somewhere, you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes. See this post for an explanation of how it works.
See also Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device.
tt2

After installing iTunes 10.5 update i get the following message when trying to play any song in my Library "The song could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?" how do i fix this??

I have an iPod Classic and work on Windows 7.
i recently installed iTunes 10.5 update and since then i cannot play any of the songs in the Library - i get the following message
"The song could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?"
what happened to all my songs (almost 2000) How can i get them back into my music library?
Please help - i do not want to spend another week downloading all my cd's onto my computer !!!!!

Try my script FindTracks. Select a few of the missing files to start with then run the script. Choose No at the first prompt so that you can check how it works track by track, then confirm or edit the location of the media folder where your files are. Once you are happy with how it behaves let it process larger numbers of tracks automatically.
tt2

Itunes 9.1.1 'File Could Not Be Found' Error

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for