Itunes can't locate my files

All my songs on Itunes display an exclamation point and message comes up song can't be used because original file cannot be located. this occurs even for my purchased music. Is there a fix or a way to get my music back?

The "missing file" thing 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. I can provide a step by step guide if you give me the two paths.
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

Similar Messages

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

ITunes can't locate some files after HD swap

I've just transferred my files from an old external HD, to a new one. these files included some music from my iTunes Library. this is a hassle - but i've got my music split up into two parts on my internal drive, and the rest on an external drive...
I suspected this maybe a problem - but i've renamed the new external HD to have exactly the same volume name as the old one - i thought that this would keep iTunes working fine. i have some of my songs that are on the external HD working fine - iTunes didn't have a problem with them. but others that are on the external HD get the "!" next to them - and the old "original file cannot be found" message.
I am sure that the files are in there... i just added them to my iTunes Library after i'd moved then to my old external HD. then i had to move everything to the new external HD. i have manually located some of the songs.. and they're right in the same location as they were when i added them. this is strange...
I also tried moving the iTunes Library and the .xml file out of ~/Music/iTunes/ folder, then started up iTunes again (resulting in an empty library). then i tried to Import that .xml file - but i got the error:
"Some of the songs in the file "iTunes Music Library.xml" were not imported because they could not be found."
I opened up the .xml file in TextEdit and it lists the full path to each song. so i'm thinking - if somehow there's any differences or errors in the path names, i could use the "find & replace" function of TextEdit to fix it... well i'll keep working on it. i was wondering if anyone here knows what's happening? especially regarding why some songs on that external HD would still play fine in iTunes, and other "can't be found".
and sorry for the long post - i hope i've explained this properly. just ask if you're a bit confused. :P
EDIT>>
okay - i think i've found my problem...
i had re-named my old drive, after i changed the name of my new drive to what the old drive previously was, so i didn't get confused. but i must have opened up iTunes along the way somewhere... i've checked the .xml file and some of the file paths have the name from my old, re-named HD. i've been doing a find and replace in TextEdit - so hopefully that will fix it all.

There is a better way to do this: use the File > Add To Library command. But first you should open iTunes Prefs > Advanced and deselect the "copy files to iTunes Music folder..." option and the "keep iTunes music folder organize" option.
After you have done this use the Add To Library command to get iTunes to recognize your music again.

ITunes can't locate some files that are right where they should be

I'm using iTunes 12 for Windows. I keep a huge iTunes library at home on a mapped NAS share and the same library at work on a local drive. Every week on Monday I sync my entire iTunes folder from home to an external drive and then bring that external drive to work and sync it to my local drive there. (Note: This is a one way sync; I never sync in the other direction.) This system has worked flawlessly for six years.
Within the last six weeks, I've started to get error messages on my work system saying that many (>1600) media files of various types cannot be located. I assumed corruption was the issue so I deleted my entire 500GB iTunes folder and re-copied everything back over. Not just the media files. Everything. The problem persists and I cannot figure out why.
I have confirmed that iTunes on the work computer is referencing the correct iTunes library file. I have confirmed that iTunes is pointing to the correct iTunes folder. I have confirmed that the "missing" iTunes files are right where they should be. (I have always had iTunes set to move imported media into the iTunes folder so there is no stray media floating around on either system. And I have iTunes set to organize the media.)
It is worth noting that I started seeing this around the time when I upgraded to iTunes 12. When I upgraded to iTunes 12 I had to change the path to my home library from "\\<NAS>\iTunes\iTunes Music" to "M:\iTunes\iTunes Music" due to a bug in iTunes that created iPhone syncing issues if the iTunes library is on a network drive. But I can't figure out why this would matter. The path on the work computer is correct and all media files are there.
Ideas? I just don't understand how deleting everything and starting over doesn't solve the issue since there is NO issue at home.

Thanks again for your help with this, tt2. (I keep wanting to call you "Alan".)
I totally botched the repair process, including my library and media collection, four different times. If not for the fact that I had a complete, up-to-date copy of my library and all media files I would be completely scr3wed right now. I'm going to outline the mistakes I made for the benefit of those who might reference this thread in the future.
A big part of my struggle was the underlying assumptions I was making about how the iTunes database is maintained and tracked. It is not the same as the digital asset managers I use for work—Lightroom, for example. I really had to quit thinking for myself and pay attention to what tt2 wrote about the way the iTunes db works in the link he provides earlier in this thread about making split libraries portable.
The biggest mistake I made is failing to understand that after you move the iTunes library files (but not the media files) to a new iTunes drive or directory outside of the existing iTunes folder and then shift-click to open that relocated library in iTunes you have to set the iTunes Media folder location (in preferences>advanced) to the empty iTunes Media folder in the NEW iTunes folder. You do NOT set it (or leave it) pointed to the old iTunes Music/Media folder where your files [may] actually reside before consolidation. This mistake can make a bad situation much worse.
Finally, I did not have a split library in the sense that my media files were outside of my iTunes Media folder. Because of this, when I incorrectly pointed the new iTunes library to the old iTunes Media folder and then consolidated I created 9,936 duplicate files. I had a complete back up which made eliminating the duplicate files a simple process. Without the backup I would have been in trouble.
So...to fix my problem I followed tt2's instructions and did this:
Backed up my entire M:\iTunes folder including libraries and media files. If everything goes well, this backup will not be touched.
Created a new A:\iTunes folder plus an empty A:\iTunes\iTunes Media folder.
Moved everything from M:\iTunes to A:\iTunes EXCEPT for the iTunes Music* folder. (*It was the new iTunes 9 and later hierarchy but with the old name.)
Shift-Clicked to open iTunes and selected the iTunes library inside A:\iTunes.
Once iTunes was open I went to Edit>Preferences>Advanced and made the empty A:\iTunes\iTunes Media the location of my media.
Went to File>Library>Organize Library and choose "consolidate". After hours of file copying, my issue was resolved. A:\iTunes is portable.
Confirmed that the new A:\iTunes library correctly links to all media in the A:\iTunes\iTunes Media folder and then deleted the M:\iTunes directory with the old M:\iTunes\iTunes Music folder inside.
NOTE: It bears repeating that the problem solved was that I could not move my old M:\iTunes folder to a different workstation w/o breaking some of the links. However all the links worked fine in the M:\iTunes location. If this were not the case then this solution will not resolve anything.

ITunes can't locate music files

Any music that was copied into my iTunes music folder cannot be located. Anytime that I try to play the file from iTunes, it shows an error message, requests that I locate the file, and then proceeds to tell me that I need to format my hard drive. When I try to open my iTunes music folder directly, my computer freezes and then after 10 minutes informs me that my hard drive needs to be formatted. I never had this problem until I downloaded the new version of iTunes. This is only going on with music I have copied into my iTunes folder, which is all the CDs I have or had. Many of these CDs I no longer physically have. I have tried to use a previous iTunes library to fix the problem. I have also moved my preferences files to the desktop as suggested in another thread, but neither have worked. I am not having any other problems with my computer that would encourage me to format my hard drive besides this issue. I would appreciate any help possible with this predicament.
Compaq Presario V2000 Windows XP AMD 64, 60GB

Any music that was copied into my iTunes music folder cannot be located. Anytime that I try to play the file from iTunes, it shows an error message, requests that I locate the file, and then proceeds to tell me that I need to format my hard drive. When I try to open my iTunes music folder directly, my computer freezes and then after 10 minutes informs me that my hard drive needs to be formatted. I never had this problem until I downloaded the new version of iTunes. This is only going on with music I have copied into my iTunes folder, which is all the CDs I have or had. Many of these CDs I no longer physically have. I have tried to use a previous iTunes library to fix the problem. I have also moved my preferences files to the desktop as suggested in another thread, but neither have worked. I am not having any other problems with my computer that would encourage me to format my hard drive besides this issue. I would appreciate any help possible with this predicament.
Compaq Presario V2000 Windows XP AMD 64, 60GB

Itunes can't locate original files for songs on my external harddrive

I recently added my music collection to a new computer from my external harddrive. At first everything worked great, now when i open itunes and try to play songs that are located on the harddrive the following error message pops up "The Song "xxxx" could not be used because the original file could not be located. Would you like to locate it?" I am able to locate the files one at a time, but i have over 12000 songs. I am wondering if there is a way to make itunes recognize that all of the songs it is looking for are located on the external harddrive. Any/all help is appreciated.

1)if you have an ipod than you are in luck. plug it in.
2)go to my computer and select your ipod.
3)click on search and DO NOT TYPE ANYTHING IN OR CLICK ON ANY THING.
4)you will be on the first page with the little charactor in the bottom left hand side of the page.
5)just click "OK" NOTHING ELSE!!!!!!!!
6)then click on search
7)when it is done searching, select all your music and PUT IT IN A FOLDER. any folder will be fine.
8)select all of the music in the new folder and drag and drop it in to itunes.
9)that is it but if you have any questons email me at [email protected]

ITunes can't locate music files THAT I CAN

Last night, when I opened iTunes, each song I clicked on gave me a "!" next to it, followed by this message:
"The song XYZ could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?"
Well, I know exactly where the song is, which is where all the songs are and have been for some time on my LaCie external drive. They are, in fact, still there. When I go to a music file through the Finder and double-click the file name, it plays--through iTunes--and is recognized by iTunes thereafter. I could do this for all 2,500 songs, but I have a life to live in the next three to four years.
Why is this happening and, more importantly, what can be done about it?

this can also happen anytime the external drive is not available... i have 1/2 my library on an external drive and whenever the power goes out in my neighborhood, iTunes temporarilly looses the link to the external drive... my neighborhood was built in the 1920s, and the power goes out many times a year... i use an old powerbook for my iTunes computer, which i keep plugged into my stereo... when the power hiccups, the external drive goes down, but the powerbook continues on it's battery... if iTunes or the external drive get too confused by going up and down, then i just powercycle the external drive and reboot my powerbook and everything has normally gone back to normal... the power issues are part of the reason i wanted to keep as much as i could on the internal powerbook drive... and i keep everything backed up...
anyway, i'll try you suggestion for the "option" on launch... i had to replace my external drive which finally died (from 2001)... so now i need to relink the files back to iTunes, hopefully not manually since i have about 2500 files to fix... i did copy all the files from the internal disc to the new external drive and merged the libraries, then tried using the iTunes preferences to point to the folder in the external drive... but that didn't work in my case... it still sees 1/2 of the files still in the internal drive and still has "!" for all the files on the external drive...
for tlee61, this makes me wonder if you might not need to check the iTunes preferences to see where it is looking for your files. if you set it up to store all files on the external disc, and it is set up to copy in the files to the iTunes library, then that option in the preference file for the library location might have gotten changed inadvertently... if you have iTunes set up to NOT copy in the files, and your files are in random locations on the external drive, that may be much harder to solve... i'm not positive of the best approach... i think there may be an option for iTunes to search the drives for music, like when someone installs/runs iTunes for the 1st time... but i'm not sure, off the top of my head, how to trigger that... i may be looking for that option if i can't seem to figure out another way to relink my files... but i'm afraid that it will try to either copy everything from the external drive to the internal drive, where there is no more space, or that it will try to copy the files on the internal drive to the external drive, where i've already merged the files (and eliminated some duplications)...
i very much want to keep all the metadata... so i'm hesitent to experiment blindly too much since i don't want to do something that "imports" all the songs, but looses all the metadata... in my case, it would be easier to relink the files manually than attempt to recreate all the metadata...
if i find a solution besides just manually relinking files, i'll let you know...
i expect there is a way to solve this...
luck to us both-

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.

I have downloaded iTunes 10.5 but after it downloads it vanishes and I can not locate the file anyway on my PC. I have done this a few times now. Any ideas?

have downloaded iTunes 10.5 but after it downloads it vanishes and I can not locate the file anyway on my PC. I have done this a few times now. Any ideas?

This has happened to me over the last few hours. iTunes just would not open, so I uninstalled and downloaded again. Still refuses to open. iPhone cannot be synced as a result. Help anyone...

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.

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).

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

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 any of my songs

OK so I plugged my iPod into my computer to sync it because I've added some new music lately. But I'd forgotten to plug in my external HD (where I have almost all of my 4500 songs) so obviously it said all the tracks couldn't be found and stuff. So I closed iTunes, unplugged my iPod, plugged in my hard drive and plugged my iPod in again. Only all the tracks still aren't located (except a few random albums that are on the computer's HD and not the external).
I've tried a few things but the only thing that seems to work is manually locating individual tracks. I have like 4500 songs though and manually locating over 4000 of them isn't too appealing to me. Unfortunately I can't find another way to do it without nuking and rebuilding the whole library (thereby losing all my playlists and playcounts and stuff).
So basically I messed up by trying to sync when my HD wasn't plugged in, but now that it's plugged in and everything has been restarted iTunes can't relocate the files (none of them have been moved)? Is there a way to fix this without locating every single track?
If this can't be resolved I think I'm going to finally switch to Winamp and not have to deal with iTunes ever again....
Message was edited by: birdman829

Hey, make sure that your extnal hard drive is connected. Start
iTunes. No need to connect your iPod at this stage.Go into
Edit - Prefs, select the advanced tab at the top and
ensure that the path to iTunes music folder location is
set to your ext. hard drive. e.g. E:\exthd\iTunes\music. Always
ensure that your external hard disk is connected before
you start iTunes otherwise iTunes will get confused.
The 4500 songs should now be seen by iTunes.
The odd few albums/songs that are located on your c:\drive
will now have a circle next to them, indicating that the
original files cannot be found. Simply move these to the
external hard disk and re-import the individual
songs/Albums again.

Itunes can't locate my files

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for