Itunes can't find all my songs. how to tell iTunes where they all are

i had to re-install a new hard drive and i downloaded and installed iTunes. i have all my iTunes songs on another drive. i saved the itunes library file and now when i open iTunes it shows all my albums and songs but when i try to play them they won't play. if i double click on a song i can tell iTunes where the song is and it will play but i don't want to have to do that to every track. how can i tell iTunes where all my songs are? i tried to Add Folder to the library but it only gets so far and says that it doesn't have the room for all the songs or something like that. i don't want all that media on the c drive anyway. how can i get this to work? thanks

replying to aissy55
It comes up with a 1428 error message sometimes, and sometimes it says that I have to restore my iPod. I have restored it many times, but it just keeps going in a circle and will not sync my songs back to the iPod.
hmmmm. if you're relentlessly getting a recovery mode message, then you might be having a Windows drive letter confusion. see the following document for troubleshooting suggestions with that:
"iTunes has detected an iPod in recovery mode - Use iTunes to restore"

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I have a problem. I updatet to 5.0 and then Itunes can not find the phone and on the screen on the phone there are only a picture of an usb cabel and a logo for Itunes.

After updating Itunes can not find the phone and on the phone screen there are only a picture of an USBcabel and a Itunes logo. What can I do???

Try this previous correctly answered discussion
https://discussions.apple.com/message/11029862#11029862

ITunes can't find the original songs

Posting this for a friend with newish Macbook. He has a 10 Gb library of songs in his iTunes, that has worked well. Now suddenly when he clicks on a song in iTunes, the app says that "original file cant be found" and he has to point the way to it. Quite annoying to do with every song.
Repairing permissions or re-selecting the iTunes Music folder in iTunes prefs does not help.
Any advice? No ext drives, just plain vanilla Macbook and latest iTunes.

Easiest way to fix that is to find the CD, reload it, and take the files off the other place on your computer. Another way is instead of putting it right onto iTunes, take it to "C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\Unknown Artist". In there, past the music then double click them one at a time. The file will start to play on iTunes and will save itself under its Artist's name/names. There shouldn't be any problem after that.
Now lets see if you can help me. Call be stupid, but I can't figure out how to post my own topic.
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ITunes can't find the original file?

I have my entire iTunes collection on my iPod and, supposedly on my laptop. Yet every time I click on a laptop song, I get a message telling me that ITunes can't find the original song, do I want to look for it? I then have to run "Search", wait for the song to appear, and click on it to add it to my usable library. Then, I get two listings for the same song, and if I eliminate one listing, I get the "can't find original" message again. I have just under 60 gig of music and I don't want to search and add thousands of songs when they are already in there somewhere. I appreciate greatly any one's expertise in helping me solve this frustrating problem. Thanks!

Hi, Mike-D.
I'm assuming your music files are all in one centeral location - the iTunes Music folder or what have you.
There are a few basic strategies for dealing with your unfortunate situation:
1) Telling iTunes where the lost songs are on a one by one basis.
2) Moving the songs to where iTunes thinks they are. Unfortunately, there's no way to find out where that might be.
3) Start with a new iTunes library. Regrettably, this method will lose your playlists and related information (Ratings, Play Counts, Dates Last Played, etc.).
If that's not a deal-breaker for you, delete the current entries in your Library by highlighting them - iTunes Edit menu > Select All - and then right-clicking > Delete . You remove the entries from your Library but keep the files themselves in your iTunes Music folder, again that's assuming that's where they are in the first place.
You can then add them back into your Library by selecting the iTunes Music folder in Windows Explorer and dragging it into the Library entry in the iTunes Source List (left-hand column).

Moving pics to a firewire drive - how do I tell iphoto where they are

I moved my photo library - like 2500 images - to a firewire drive to preserve space on the system drive. Now when I boot iphoto it shows only an outline of each photo. I want to know how I tell iphoto where my pictures are located, without having to do that every time I boot the app. or without importing them again, which would make a copy in the system folder again. YUCK! Help please!

Now when I boot iphoto it shows only an outline of each photo.<<<</div>
First of all, it appears that you did not move the library correctly. It MUST be moved as an ENTITY. Don't even think about opening up the library and moving parts of it. If you made a mistake here, you need to undo that mistake before you proceed.
Be reminded that a drag to a different disk is always a copy so initially iPhoto will still access the library in the ORIGINAL location. Eventually, you want to trash that library but, before you do, you should check out the one in the new location. You need to tell iPhoto where to look only once. Hold down the Option key while starting iPhoto and, when you see the menu, direct it to the new location. Check everything out and, when you're satisfied, trash the library that still exists in the old location.
By the way, once iPhoto "knows" the location of the library, ALL imports will go there. Period.

I am recently switched from a pc to laptop and in the move I can't find my "purchased" songs in my library any more.How do I get my purchased songs back into my lnew laptop Itunes library?

I recently switched from a pc to a laptop and am in process of moving my Itunes library to my laptop.I cant find my "purchased"songs .How do I recover my purchased songs and get them into my new laptop library? There is a record of my purchase in the Itunes store.

"Where do I find my hundreds of dollars of downloads I have done since 2005?"
They will only be where you put them If you are doing the very basics, then they will be on your computer and they will be in your backup copy of your computer.
The itunes store is not global at all, never has been. You cannot redownload your content from another country. You can only use the countrys itunes store for the country that you are physically located.

I purchased an ablum thru itunes on my phone and it says i purchased the songs on itunes but when i go on my music it says i have to repurchase all the songs how can i get the songs with out havin to pay again

I purchased an ablum thru itunes on my phone and it says i purchased the songs on itunes but when i go on my music it says i have to repurchase all the songs how can i get the songs with out havin to pay again

Whether you can redownload music depends upon what country that you in. If you are using your computer's iTunes then does music show in the Purchased link under Quicklinks on the right-hand side of the iTunes store home page (on your phone you might be able to redownload media via the Purchased tab in the iTunes store app) ? If music shows there, but not that album, then check to see if it's hidden : http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4919
If you aren't in a country when you can redownload music and it's still on your phone then you should be able to copy it over from the phone via File > Devices > Transfer Purchases.

How to recover song that are "lost", itunes can't find them even though I have downloaded and played them before

Does anyone know how to recover songs that itunes has "lost"?
I downloaded them, synced my ipod, songs were added and I was able to play them.
On a recent sync the songs are suddenly "not found" according to itunes. I can't locate them in the itunes folder, so I have no idea where itune put them. BTW-this is not the first time itunes stored songs in a random directory...... Since itune can't find them, they were deleted from my ipod

Look, I understand I still need a card attached to the account. The problem is, it won't accept my card because I only have 87 cents in my bank account right now.
If I had known there would be so much trouble with the iTunes card, I would have just put the cash in my bank account in the morning instead of buying an iTunes card (I didn't expect the banks to be open on Thanksgiving of course).
Apple will only accept cards that have a balance. The balance is so small in my account that it won't accept it as a valid card.
I'm going to have to contact Apple anyway to reset the security questions. That's obvious. Your answers were not exactly helpful. You didn't tell me anything I don't already know, but thanks for trying to be helpful.

I connected my friends ipod to my laptop whilst I was playing some songs and closed whatever came up on the screen from itunes. Next thing I know his ipod has been wiped and we can't find his music. How do we get his music back?

I connected my friends ipod to my laptop whilst I was playing some songs and closed whatever came up on the screen from itunes. Next thing I know his ipod has been wiped and we can't find his music. How do we get his music back? He hasn't got his laptop anymore so the only music he has was on his ipod.

Hasn't he got a backup of his content on external drives and/or CDs or DVDs ?

How do you get album artwork? I have like two thousand songs and about 95% don't have cover album artwork and when i try to get album artwork it says "Itunes can not find album artwork" "an unknown error occurred-609" what do i do?

How do you get album artwork? I have like two thousand songs and about 95% don't have cover album artwork and when i try to get album artwork it says "Itunes can not find album artwork" "an unknown error occurred-609" what do i do?

Perhaps try the "Error -609" section in the Specific Conditions and Alert Messages: (Mac OS X / Windows) section of the following document:
iTunes: Advanced iTunes Store troubleshooting

My Library has ten more songs than my iPod. How can I find out which songs are not syncing?

My Library has ten more songs than my iPod. How can I find out which songs are not syncing?
I recently had to purchase a new hard drive. Because the size of my music collection exceeds 140 GB, I stored all of my music on a separate external hard drive. When I exported everything back into my new iTunes library, I found that I had about 200 more songs than I had in the previous library. After deleting most of those extraneous songs, I was able to get my library close to where it was before. However, after syncing to my iPod Classic, I noticed that only 34,853 of the 34,863 loaded. How can I figure out which of those ten songs in my library did not sync to my iPod?
Yellow12

It may be that the 10 songs are unchecked. To find them select songs view.
If there is a column Heading marked with a tick then click on it to sort by this column.
If the Column is not there then View > View Options and select the Checked column which will then display
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Move all my music to another folder but Itunes can't find the files!

I have all my music on my desktop in small folders for each artist.
But now i don't have room anymore, because i have to much music.
So i want to move it all in to a folder called "Music". But when i do that
Itunes can't find the files, and i have to search for each file, to find the new location instead of the desktop. How do i move my music more easily? So i don't have to synchronize it all in again, with the right album covers and that..
Please, need some help here!

You need to open your preferences file in iTunes and click on advance then select the location of where you put the folder. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527

I updates my iPod before syncing it and lost all my song how can I see what song i lost?

I updated my iPod before syncing it and lost all my songs how can I see what songs I lost?

From your backup that is in iTunes or in iCloud or resync them from your computer.

Itunes can't find songs

Wonder if anyone could help with a problem. I have my iTunes library on an external hard drive. I always try to make sure I connect the drive before opening iTunes but on one occasion I didn't and I found that iTunes changed the library to the default location on my C drive (in my docs/my music folder). I instantly changed this to point to the one on the external drive (H) but now I am getting question marks next to loads of songs indicating that iTunes can't find them. I can't work out why this is??
Does iTunes do something else when moving the location of the library?
Is there a quick way to get iTunes to see all these tracks again without re-importing the tracks from the external drive into iTunes?
Regards
Chris

Whit the library location pointing to your external drive, you can click on file at the top of itunes and use add to library. Then in the window that comes up, navigate to the drive and folder that houses your music. If the music is exactly the same, itunes should re-associate the music back to itunes without duplicating entries.

Having moved my Itunes folder to external hardrive and resetting where it is in preferences Itunes can't find them and I have to direct it to every song - I have a months worth of songs on there so this will take avery long time - any ideas on what;s up?

Having moved my Itunes folder to a new external hardrive and resetting where it is in preferences Itunes can't find them and I have to direct it to every song- a little ! pops up next to the song and a dialogue box says Itunes can't find it so thn i have to manually search for it - I have a months worth of songs on there so this will take avery long time - any ideas on what's up?

nellydee wrote:
Having moved my Itunes folder to a new external hardrive and resetting where it is in preferences
That's not how to do it. You don't move stuff then set the iTunes prefs > Advanced.
Once you move the /iTunes/ folder, hold Option, launch iTunes and select Choose library... and select the ITunes folder on the external.
This will use the iTunes library file in the iTunes folder you moved.
Don't change iTunes prefs > Advanced.

Itunes can't find all my songs. how to tell iTunes where they all are

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