Itunes can't locate file?

recently iTunes has said several of my songs (all from one cd) can't be located and when I double clicked to locate it and I found the files in a folder in My Music and clicked on it iTunes failed to respond to this and continued to say that the files cannot be located. They were playing fine yesterday and are on my iPod too.

You might ask over in the iPhone forums, but I am pretty sure that roaming profile path is hard coded. You might need to start over with Win7 by installing iTunes on Win7.
You can copy this folder from XP
\Documents and Settings\ +your username+ \My Documents\My Music\iTunes
to the similar folder on Win7. In Vista it is
\Users\ +your username+ \Music\iTunes
Also try copying these folders over from XP to Win7
\Documents and Settings\ +your username+ \Application Data\Apple Computer
C:\Documents and Settings\ +your username+ \Local Settings\Application Data\Apple Computer

Similar Messages

ITunes can't locate files, even though they never move.

My iTunes is set to copy new files to a dedicated music folder on an internal storage drive and to keep this folder organized. I have never moved this folder or edited anything within this folder.
Now, one day I start my iTunes and I'm greeted with thousands upon thousands of little exclamation marks telling me that iTunes can't locate the files. I made sure that the drive letter didn't change and that every file was still in there. There were too many songs missing to manually locate each song, so I highlighted my entire library and deleted it (while keeping the files, obviously). Several hours after re-adding my music library, everything was good and like it once was.
Not even a day later, I re-open iTunes to find that all the exclamation marks were back and that it could not locate any of my files again. This time I decide to go through all the steps properly by clearing the folder where the xml files are located, uninstalling iTunes, moving my music to an external hard drive and making sure there was no trace of iTunes left.
Ready to start again, I installed iTunes, set where I liked my files to be stored and set my other preferences (including "organize my iTunes folder" and "copy new files to iTunes Folder"). I then re-added my music and spent a day waiting for it to copy to the new iTunes folder. After this I deleted the folder that contained my originals and was left with a fresh install of iTunes and all my music was where I wanted it.
This worked for almost a whole month before thousands of songs went "missing" again. I simply don't know what to do. I can't keeping re-adding my library again and again because a few thousand songs went missing. Each time I do it, it just takes longer and longer and i'm sick of it.
Any help with my problem would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Presumably the location of the iTunes media folder is still correctly set in preferences when this happens?
One thing you can do to investigate this is to select a track that can't be found and go to Get Info>>Summary tab.
This will show you where iTunes thinks it is and the name of the file. Now find the file in Windows Explorer and compare the location and file name are they the same?
A thing that occurs to me is that you have other software on your PC that is able to move/rename files. Do you have anything like that?
Windows Media player has a check box that allows the renaming of files in Options, it's worth looking for that.

Itunes can't locate files after I listen to it on the Ipod

It seems that every time I listen to a song, I notice that Itunes can't locate it anymore. When I go to Itunes and look in my music folder, there is an exclamation point next to the song. When I click on it, the error message reads "cannot locate file, would you like to locate it now". At first it was only one or two songs, now it's over 50! These songs are still on my Ipod,just no longer in Itunes. I know how to recover the music b/c it's in my hard drive, I just don't want to sit there and find all these songs all over again. Help please.

I too have been having the same problem... I am a new ipod owner and same with itunes. And being a new owner and user I got the new itunes. It has done the exclimation point since the first day I got it. But mine is simple to fix. I mearly just exit out of itunes and re-open it. I dont evn have to wait at all. It shows the exclimation point with about 20 of my songs and it hasnt gotten in my way yet. But the main problem that makes me mad is that my ipod is only 2 weeks old but I tried to get some of my friends music and she has the older version of itunes and my ipod ONLY works on the new version. Very frustrating if you ask me.
Hp Windows XP

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.

Try going to edit-preferences-advanced- then change the location of your iTunes library to your hard drive.
Hope that helps.

3500 songs in iTunes with exlamation points - iTunes can't locate files but they are there!

Hi,
Since a few weeks, 3500 of my 10000 iTunes songs have exclamation points. When I try to play a song, I get an error message stating that iTunes can't find the song. If I search for it, it's on my Mac. So the files are on my hard drive, except that iTunes can't find them.
As it's weeks of work to manually relink the songs to their location on my hard disk, is there anybody who could help me with this?
Many thanks in advance!

Hi Esteban
As you see the exclamation mark represents a missing link to the file and the subsequent unable to play the track.
If you select one of those files and look at the info(CMD I or Get Info) and go to the Summary tab that identifies where iTunes thinks it was stored. From here you can navigate in finder to that location or do a search for what iTunes states the filename is e.g. (01 Track 01.mp3).
So either the file is deleted, renamed or moved.
Regards
Mark

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.
Any advice? Thanks.
Completely frustrated,
Andy
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...

Time Capsule and iTunes - Can't Locate Files

Ok, so I have a relatively new Macbook Pro 15" and an equally-new Time Capsule. I put all of my 4,500 songs onto the Time Capsule because I only listen to music and home and also because I wanted to save space on my hard drive. While this set up has worked up until now, I am beginning to experience some problems. Right now iTunes says that it cannot locate the file for any of my songs unless I manually show it where those files are on my Time Capsule. I am not worries about losing the files because they appear to be unaltered, however I wanted to know if there was a way to have iTunes automatically search through my music folder and fix the problem. I know there is a way to download all the music from my hard drive to my computer and then back to the hard drive to fix the problem, but I would really like to avoid having to dump all those files onto my pristine hard drive. Any suggestions? And I am sorry if this has been answered elsewhere, I just could not locate a thread with this EXACT problem. Thanks.

Isn't there a better way around this??? Here's what I want: I want to store all of my itunes library on my Time Capsule to save space on my HD. I understand that I won't be able to access the library out of my home, but that's fine. The problem is -
1) When I am at home, I have to manually mount the Time Capsule by clicking on the folder, waiting for it to connect, and then opening iTunes (even if my computer is already backing up files to the Time Capsule). It's a real pain and adds unnecessary steps.
2) When I am not at home and away from my Time Capsule, I can't even open iTunes at all without it prompting me to locate the library or create a new one. Even if I don't want to listen to my songs, I'd like to be able to open iTunes to use the radio, surf the store, etc.
What is the best solution? It seems ridiculous that a wireless HD doesn't connect automatically, and that you can't open iTunes without a library. Is there a workaround? Can I keep the library database file on my HD but have the actual files (songs, movies, etc.) be on the Time Capsule? Please advise.
Thanks.

ITunes can't locate files

Hi,
I've had a LaCie external since Christmas and when I first got it, I transfered all my song files to it. I changed the location of my iTunes folder to the folder on the external and it played music without a problem.
Usually, if I have to unplug my external, I make sure to close iTunes and not open it until it's plugged back in. Once I think I opened it and iTunes had a lot of !s next to songs but after I plugged the external back in, everything was fine.
So, yesterday, I unplugged my external. I was gone for most of the day so I went I came back, I saw that someone had opened iTunes. It looked normal (no !s), so I didn't worry about it. I plugged the external back in and might have played some music. I can't remember.
Today, I plugged in my iPod and got an error message saying that some songs couldn't be transfered because they couldn't be located. Now virtually all my songs have !s next to them. When I click on them, it asks me to relocate. When I do, there's no problem.
I went to the advanced options and changed my iTunes folder back, because it had somehow changed to something else. Except, the songs still won't play.
There are still some songs that are there and have no problems. I think they might be songs I added recently, but there's really no rhyme or reason to it as far as I can tell.
Please tell me what I can do. I'd really had to go in an locate every since song.
Thanks!

I moved my iTunes folder to an external HD, as it was getting too large for my iBook, and at first saw the exclamation points too.
I came to this area to see if there were any others with this problem, saw your post, and the advice given.
It worked for me! I restarted with the option key down, chose the library on my external firewire drive, and everything loaded up and played like it did before. Not the music folder, mind you -- the library.
Thank you, iTunes helpers!

Itunes can't locate files on my computer after recovery

My computer had to be restarted as if from the day I bought it. My files were backed up on a flash drive and I can't seem to locate them in the recovery folder. I tried opening my purchased music, and got an error message saying that the file couldn't be located on my computer. How do I solve this problem?

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, or that the drive it lives on has had a change of drive letter. It is also possible that iTuneshas 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.
Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to get info, then cancel when asked to try to locate the track. 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, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions.
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.
If you have to resort to trying to pull back the library from your iPod see Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device.
tt2

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).

ITunes Can't Locate Original File - 7.7 error?

hoping someone out there can help me....
basically, I have 2 external hard drives. the first one is a 160GB hard drive, the second one is a 250GB hard drive. initially I had all of my music on the 160GB, but when it got too full I copied everything over on the 250GB drive, so I could add more music to it. everything's been working fine for 2 years on the 250GB drive until this weekend when all of the sudden, iTunes is now looking for the music on the old drive again, saying that it can't find the original file. the songs are all on the new drive, but for some reason it will only look for them on the old one. So - if I have BOTH drives on, everything works fine. If I turn the old drive off, iTunes can't locate 3/4 of my music. it's frustrating because all of the old stuff is on the new drive but iTunes won't see it. I've even tried copying some of the stuff from the old drive onto the new drive and itunes still seems to be looking for it the old drive even when I change the pathway to the new drive in the general preferences.
the only thing I can think of is:
1) buy a new larger drive and cut and paste everything onto it. not sure that that would fix it.
2) reinstall itunes, but I'm afraid of losing my settings and all of the movies,
apps, games I've bought etc.
anyone have any advice? is it a library file issue?

Yeah,
I've upgraded to 7.7 and have a large library of tracks on an external drive. I added them manually to the library - rather tedious, it took me about 3 days!
I was careful to choose the iTunes folder in the correct location and I chose to uncheck the "keep iTunes organised" box as it messes up where things are kept. I'm now starting to get ! against about 25% of the library. I really don't want to manually re-direct it to about 5,000 tracks. Is there any way this can be done en masse or is this a 7.7 bug?
This is a real pain. Can anyone help?
curly

I can't access half of my downloaded music. I get a message, "can't locate file" What is up with that? I dauthorized my computer and reloaded itunes, but it did not solve the problem. Any suggestions? Thank you.

I can't access half of my downladed music. I get a message, "can't locate file." I dauthorized my computer and reloaded itunes, but it did not help. Any suggestions? Thank you.

This 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, or that 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.
Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to get info, then cancel when asked to try to locate the track. 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, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions.
Alternatively, as long as you can find a location holding the missing files, then you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes .
tt2

Since downloading 11.0.1 (12), Itunes can't locate or play many songs but the same songs still play on my synched iPod.

Since downloading Itunes 11.0.1 (12), Itunes can't locate or play many songs but the same songs still play on my synched iPod. I have a MacBook Air, Lion OS, Itunes version 11.0.1 (12). I didn't see this problem with older versions of Itunes. I do not manually change the organization of the Itunes library. I use the Itunes "add to library" feature or Amazon's MP3 downloader. Sometimes, however, I have changed song information in the "info" window. Such as unchecking the "compilation" button and sorting by artist (for that song), so that I can search by artist in the top pane of Itunes (otherwise the song is sorted in an album that is a "compilation," but not under the name of the artist who sang a particular song. I've done this without problem in the past, but perhaps the newer version of Itunes can't handle the changes I made and has lost track of where the older version of Itunes stored such songs? How do I fix all these older previously ok changes if that's the case... If I could just find where they are stored in Itunes it would be easier perhaps. I've looked in compilations, unknown artist, and so forth to no avail. And Finder search can't find them.
Details: suddenly, many songs are marked with "!," denoting that Itunes cannot find the songs in the library and cannot play them. Oddly, my iPod CAN play the "unlocatable" songs with no problem (it has been synched "post problem"). So the songs are still there somewhere in the Itunes library. This problem occurs by album, that is, all songs from the same album become unlocatable, although different albums by the same artist may still be found and played.
Exploring the Itunes library to try to locate the missing albums/songs, I discovered that generally there is no longer any folder specified for any artist associated with a missing album [artist is the top level of organization and album is the second; compilations are in the same folder]. This is true even if I have other albums from the same artist which Itunes IS able to locate. I cannot find a single song/album by such artists anywhere in the Itunes file system, even the ones that Itunes can still play. If I right click and "get info" for an unlocatable song, I get a notification box that asks if I want to locate the file. If I click "no," next thing-- the info window for the song pops up, with all the correct info (including sort info, which I double check)! Why is Itunes able to locate all the info on the song, but is not able to play the MP3 file?
Using Finder I cannot locate the songs that are unlocatable by Itunes (except the original download files in the Amazon MP3 folder). Finder is, of course, able to find Itunes songs that Itunes has no trouble locating. What's up?! My iPod can find them just fine. I just synched my iPod again and am playing the "unlocatable" songs right now.
I can "fix" most of these files by downloading files one by one into Itunes from my Amazon download folder or from my CDs using the "add to library" feature. In fact, it is strange. But this will take a very long time! And what if this problem continues recurring? But something strange happens when I implement this fix. I added one song to Itunes (from the Amazon MP3 folder, using "add to library") for one "unlocatable" album of Pete Seegers. After adding that one song, I looked at the Itunes music library and discovered that a folder for Pete Seeger (which was not there before I added the song) had been newly created, or restored. In this folder was the one song I had just added, but ALSO all my other Seeger albums that had previously remained "locatable" by Itunes. But the other "unlocatable" songs were not restored, unfortunately.

I have found a workaround. When I create a new playlist, iTunes allows me to add or remove songs from existing playlists for a short while. Then, for some reason it prevents me from adding and deleting songs again. Not sure why. Go figure.

ITunes can't locate ⅔ of my Music Library -- How to repair?

I manually reorganized the iTunes Media Folder on my MacBook Air because everything was all jumbled up in the Music folder -- Songs, Movies, Mobile apps etc. everything all mixed up in Music folder. I manually dragged the Movie, iTunes U, Mobile Applications etc.Folders out of Music Folder and put everything into iTunes Media Folder. The same order as it is on my desktop iMac. Now iTunes can't locate about 1/2 of my Music library. Everything else (movies, TV shows etc.) works fine, but iTunes lost the location of 1/2my music library. I get the message "The song "ABC" could not be used because the original file could not be located. Would you like to locate it"
Is there a way to reset iTunes so that it knows where all the songs are (they are all in the music folder which is in the iTunes Media Folder). If I have to locate every song individually it will take weeks.
File ->Library -> Organize Library -> click Consolidate and Reorganize files in iTunes Media didn't seem to work. Isn't this the way to let iTunes know where all those songs it can't locate are?
Kindly advise if you know how to slove this.
Thank you.
P.S. Still using Mountain Lion on this computer

I manage my music manually by turning off the advanced preferences for iTunes managing my music and copying it to the iTunes folder when adding it to the library. Realize if you do this you are taking responsibility for keeping track of your music -- you will have to be organized. If you want to move your library you will have to track down all the files. Your files will retain their original names and folder names and structure, so make sure it makes sense. There's a few other disadvantages which I can't remember right now. Even with manually managing you still occasionally get a broken link, and my experience is all with iTunes 7.5 which I still use. I may be wrong but I suspect newer versions of iTunes are trying to do more at one time with all the store and cloud interface and may be more "delicate".
If you are downloading from Apple or ripping a CD, iTunes will put it in its normal folder structure anyway, though you can remove it from there.
The various scripts on the Dougscripts web site were written at different stages. You have to read about iTunes version compatibility in the blurb about each script. I don't see how you end up with multiple libraries using hte scripts.
The .itl file can reset itself but not with what you are doing. If you had moved your whole library and broken all the links you could have found just one and iTunes might have offered to find the others based upon the same structure (not something it will do if you manually manage, by the way).

I get itunes can't find file when I tried to play a TV show I had purchased that was supposed to be in the cloud. There are several of these, including an entire season. In the store it shows that I purchased these shows when I checked them.

I get itunes can't find file when I tried to play a TV show I had purchased. I then checked and had this problem with an entire TV season I had purchesed. The shows were supposed to be in the cloud. I went to the itunes store, went to the tv shows and they showed that I had purchesed them. They do not show up when I click on purchesed in the store.

Try this...
Empty/corrupt library after upgrade/crash
Hopefully it's not been too long since you last upgraded iTunes, in fact if you get an empty/incomplete library immediately after upgrading then with the following steps you shouldn't lose a thing or need to do any further housekeeping. In the Previous iTunes Libraries folder should be a number of dated iTunes Library files. Take the most recent of these and copy it into the iTunes folder. Rename iTunes Library.itl as iTunes Library (Corrupt).itl and then rename the restored file as iTunes Library.itl. Start iTunes. Should all be good, bar any recent additions to or deletions from your library.
See iTunes Folder Watch for a tool to catch up with any changes since the backup file was created.
When you get it all working make a backup!
tt2

Itunes can't locate file?

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