Itunes can not locate my music files.

I have just moved the whole of 'My Documents' to a new internal drive as i was running out of space in the old drive. Then after doing this, i deleted my original 'My Documents' off the old drive.
However, now about 80% of my music all needs locating. This means i would have to locate each individual file of over 2000 songs. This would take years and do not want to do this. (am not sure if this is relevant, but i have my files in various places on the computer, so not all in one folder.)
Have you any suggestions? I would really appreciate your help!
Thanks.

I am experiencing this problem also, I can see all 1336 of my songs, but it only plays about 30 of them. the rest it keeps saying cannot find music. Also It will not connect to the store due to no internet connection...I am always connected via broadband. I can access the store thru the internet but not itunes...please help!!!!!

Similar Messages

  • Itunes can not locate some music files

    I have a large music collection of approx. 35k songs. A few days ago about 10% of my music appeared in itunes with that exclamation point symbol and basically lost its location. If I click in the song it says that it could not locate file. The audio files are correctly placed in the itunes music folder but manually relinking them will take me forever. I have tried changing the location of the itunes music, updating library and consolidating library (even though my music was all in one folder) and it did not work. Any ideas? Cheers, Roberto

    I cannot speak for the Windows user, as I do not know whether the program acts as it does on a Mac.
    For the Mac, though, Roberto may consider this recommendation. It may end up as a very long process since he mentions that he has 35000 tracks in his library.
    There are two alternatives: the first would have you removing all of your iTunes files EXCEPT the one containing the actual music files. If your music files are stored independently on an external disk, all the better, as this means you can dispose of all of the files and folders INSIDE the folder called "Music" in your personal directory. Doing so will destroy all of the ancillary information that concerns your music library including artwork, but if you copy the contents to an external drive before you delete it on the startup, you will be able to retrieve it if it is not available at the iTunes store. After you have deleted the files, restart the computer, open iTunes and check your preferences. The preferences should be set to the way that you had them prior to this deletion. You should also verify that there are NO music items in your library before you proceed.
    Once you are satisfied that your preferences are set properly (and you have logged into the iTunes store for the cover art), choose ADD TO LIBRARY from the FILE menu. A window will appear that will allow you to navigate to your iTunes music folder. DO NOT OPEN the folder containing all the music, but click once on it then click CHOOSE, and the process of reentering all of the files will begin. Depending on the actual file size/type, this process may take as much as several hours. You may want to stay with the computer while this process is ongoing in the event that iTunes sends you an alert message.
    The alternative to this would have you leaving your iTunes folder exactly as it is but following the exact same procedure outlined above. Unfortunately, this method could take much much longer, as iTunes will stop at each of the albums that make up the library to ask whether you want to delete the original or not (the answer would be YES). This would be preferable if, like me, the user has a lot of cover art that is not available through the iTunes store (I have about 20K classical music tracks that come from CDs long out of print, so this would save time scanning artwork). I would not recommend this alternative unless more than 60% of the listings are posing problems.

  • HT203288 Itunes can not find my music files. But I can with Windows . Lost over 8 hours trying to fix stupid itunes, Even removed it and reinstalled. Still nothing.

    But I can using Windows.
    Lost over 8 hours today. Still not working
    Even deleted itunes and reinstalled.
    My Music files are still there. But itunes can not find them.

    Empty library or library full of broken links?
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  • ITunes Can't locate most music files

    I updated iTunes and it can't locate most of my music. I'd say only about 10% and that being the most recent stuff I added is all it can locate... it asks me to look for the file and I point it exactly to where it should be.
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    Welcome to AD!
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  • Itunes can't locate my music files

    I recently transferred my data from a XP to windows vista computer. Itunes and all my music transferred perfectly. I had been using it for a few weeks, no problems. On 9/12/2009 I clicked on several songs and the dreaded "file not found" came up. When I check "info" for these songs under "where" it says "not available". I still have my old computer. Should I delete itunes and re-transfer my music? I looked at several similar posts, but did not get any answers. I am wondering if this problem was caused by a recent update from apple.
    Thanks in advance.

    Does anybody know how I can get iTunes to find all of my songs it their new folder without me doing it one by one myself? Thanks
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  • HELP! iTunes can't locate my music files and don't have them on my computer anymore.

    Well pretty much none of my 2000 iTunes songs can be played. It just says the original file could not be found. I backed up my iTunes because my computer was going in for repairs and would need to be reformatted.
    It then got reformatted and put iTunes on my computer and then NONE of my songs worked!!! I don't even have any of the original files incase I wanted to import them 1-by-1. PLEASE help me I miss my tunes.

    Depending upon which store you use you may be able to recover some of your past purchases. See HT2519 - Downloading past purchases from the App Store, iBookstore, and iTunes Store.
    Note you need to delete broken entries from the library, close & then reopen iTunes, go to the iTunes Store home page, click the Purchased link from the Quick Links section in the right-hand column, then select Music and Not on this computer. You should find download links for your tracks there.
    While downloading select Downloads in the left-hand column and make sure Allow Simultaneous Downloads is unchecked. (This should reduce the risk of corrupt downloads.)
    For the future backup your library regularly with this User Tip.
    If you have an Apple device see: Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device.
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  • ITunes can't locate my music files on it's own!!

    When I try to open a song in iTunes it tells me it can't find the file cause it's changed locations and makes me locate it myself. This is easy enough to do but I have 2,000 songs and doing each individualy would take forever!
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    Does anybody know how I can get iTunes to find all of my songs it their new folder without me doing it one by one myself? Thanks
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  • Err - iTunes can not locate files

    I recently had to reload itunes and start again. Once I downloaded iTunes and started up my external harddrive it almost as if automatically imported all of my files to the library.  It took awhile but I was in heaven as I wasn't having to do the work.
    Now iTunes is failing to recognize content from my external harddrive. It says it can not locate the files, but if I ask File< Get Info it knows where the files are. I did not move the files. If I locate them manually then the file does work. Is there an easy fix for this? We just finished syncing all our iPods. I don't want to have to start that process over again. Thanks for any help.

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  • Itunes can not find original song file

    Suddenly my itunes can not find the song's original file.
    I see that the file is on the driver but when I double click on Itunes I get this mesage:
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    Any helpers out there?
    THKS

    I've been experiencing this problem for a while now. It happens with version 7.1 but it started with an earlier version of iTunes 7. I never experienced it before iTunes 7. In my experience the number of files iTunes "thinks" is missing increases with the length of time iTunes has been running between restarts (I usually just put my system to sleep overnight so it can "run" for days on end). When it first started happening I used to go and find the "missing" music file(s) and reconnect it(them). Then, one day, I found a flood of "missing" songs. I decided I had nothing to lose by stopping iTunes and restarting it. When I restarted iTunes none of my songs were missing! This indicated to me that it's the iTunes code that's active after a restart that has a bug that makes it lose track of the music files.
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  • ITunes can not find my music on external hard drive

    Had to redo my hard drive; had all music on external hard drive; copied iTunes folder onto external hard drive. Now that my desktop hard drive is clean, and new iTunes downloaded, it can not find my music on the external drive which I have always used. Is there some setting I am missing, do I have to copy music onto CPU?

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  • HT4527 My old mac book was backed up to a Time Machine drive.  That Macbook is dead.  I have a new Mac Mini.  How do I get the iTunes library (not just the music files but all other data...playlists, ratings, etc) on the new Mac from my Time Machine?

    My old Mac died. I had it backed up to a Time Machine external drive (fortunately).  I have a new Mac. I want to get my entire iTunes library from the Time Machine drive to the new Mac. I want not only the music files but all the "library" metadata, playlists, song rankings, unique genre designations. How do I do this?

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    Downloading past purchases from the App Store ... - Apple - Support

  • I home shared from my PC to my new Mac and now my iTunes can't locate the original files?

    It was working fine for about 12 hours but now my iTunes can't locate any of the files. None of my songs will play, even those I downloaded directly from a CD. Help?

    It sounds like this is much more than an iTunes problem.  I suggest you post in the operating system forum version for your computer (we have no idea which OS you are running nor what model computer).

  • Transferred songs to external hard drive, now iTunes can not locate files??

    I transferred all my song files using various tutorials on the site, I consolidated my library, etc. The external harddrive was referred to as "F:" when I did this.
    Later when I downloaded a few podcasts with my external HD disconnected, they were stored on my c: harddrive. At that point I had iTunes files on both my C: drive and F: drive (with the F: drive being disconnected at the time).
    Now my external harddrive when connected is referred to as "G:" by my pc, and iTunes could not find any of my songs previously transferred to F:. I went to preferences/advanced again and selected G:/iTunes as my new folder location, and now only SOME of my songs are located by iTunes, not all. I'm completely confused.
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      Windows XP  

    Just a refining comment: iTunes recognizes some, but not all, songs that were transferred to the new hard drive, following iTune's instructions to change the directory then consolidate the library.
    I am baffled why iTunes recognizes some songs, but not others, within the same folder....
    The easy solution would be to use "import folder" and re-import the entire iTunes files on my harddrive, and then delete the duplicates, which would include the ones non-findable by iTunes. But then my playlists would be affected. I guess I'd have to re-build my playlists manually, using the new imported files in place of the files that iTunes can't recognize, prior to deleting all the duplicate non-findable files.
    Argh, I hate pc's...thru & thru...any suggestions before I spend a few hours re-building my playlists and deleting the non-findable song files??
    Thanks...

  • Why won't itunes work with windows 8.1?  i tunes can not locate my music.

    Why won't windows 8.1 let itunes locate my music?  I deleted and downloaded, still won't do it.  But like majic after I installed windows 8.1 my computer had a XBOX music player appear, that found my 3200 songs and it was able to play the entire library no problem.  Any ideas on how i get itunes to start working with windows 8.1?

    Hi zachwill10,
    Welcome to the Support Communities!
    To resolve this issue you may need to uninstall iTunes and all of it's components, and reinstall the latest version as explained in this article:
    iTunes 11.1.4 for Windows: Unable to install or open
    http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5376
    I hope this information helps ....
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  • Since upgrading to version 8.1, iTunes "can't find original music files".

    I've been building an extensive music file since the first iPod. It's about 110 GB large and for about three years I've stored it on an external drive with absolutely no problems. Now, within hours of upgrading to iTunes 8.1, every listed item on my iTunes library has an exclamation mark next to it and the message *"The song "whatever" could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?"* Of course I can show iTunes where the song is and then it will play it but I'm not gonna do that for 110 GB's worth of music! And yes, I've gone into iTunes preferences and told it again and again where the iTunes library is located but that doesn't work. Does anyone have a fix for this? And oh by the way, I will NEVER AGAIN let Software Update sway me into upgrading to a new version of iTunes until it's been up and running without bugs for at least three months!

    Have you tried, importing the music into iTunes again? So delete the music from iTunes only not the system, & then import to see if it finds your musics?

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