ITunes creates duplicate entries

Hi.
I noticed that if I transfer a song to my iPhone, and later add lyrics or a cover (or even give a rate) to that song on my Mac, if I transfer the same song again to the iPhone, iTunes instead of updating the infos of the already existing song, creates a duplicate on the iPhone, that differs from the old one just for the detail I added later on the Mac.
Is that a known issue? Am I the only one experiencing this problem? How can I fix it?

I'm not really sure how unchecked tracks behave if they are synced to the device. I only uncheck things I really don't want to hear as a rule but don't actually want to throw away. E.g. interview tracks on an album. In the main library unchecked tracks will be skipped unless you specifically click on them to play them. Presumably it works the same way on the device, I've just never tested it.
tt2

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Calender sync creates duplicate entries!!

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Hi and welcome to the BlackBerry Forums
I never hear this, but try this.
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How do I stop iTunes from creating duplicate entries and sub-folders?????

I am SOOO SICK AND TIRED of iTunes deciding to create sub-folders all the time. I just want to have one big folder and throw all my music into it. I have now spent several weeks trying to re-create my music library after my hard drive crashed, and iTunes keeps messing everything up.
If I let iTunes do what it wants, I end up with two or three copies of each song. If I try to consolidate my files by deleting extra copies of songs, suddenly iTunes can't "find" anything.
When I go looking for the "missing" songs, iTunes creates endless fractal layers of folders within folders.
I AM SICK OF THIS!
I AM ABOUT TO ABANDON ITUNES AND GO BACK TO WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER.

CodeVII wrote:
Why when you have a large number of files it is better to have them in sub-folders???
Unchecking both those options still doesn't stop Itunes from putting files in Artist and Album folders..
The problem I see with putting music files in folders is if you want to move them or change the file properties with just the Operating System they take longer to access. So quicktime seems like something I'd try but....
I'd like to have the option to have my files in one Folder/Directory.
iTunes really wants you to use iTunes to manage the iTunes library. If you use the operating system or third party tools to modify tags, iTunes won't detect the change until it has some reason to access the tag, e.g. during playback. In contrast WMP will sniff out changes in your tags and update itself automatically.
Once you've got your media in iTunes why do you need to access it again at the folder level? As it happens I'm quite obsesive over the structure of my files both logical and physical (see grouping & scripts) but I strongly recommend others to avoid the temptation to waste too much time over the physical layout and leave iTunes to get on with it...
Many other programs have offered choices for folder structure, invalid character replacement etc. over many years without iTunes joining in. I suspect that the developers of iTunes have long since decided that extra choice in this area isn't necessary since "it just works", though by all means drop a line to iTunes Feedback.
tt2

ITunes creates duplicate tracks on its own

Hello everyone,
I noticed recently that iTunes is creating duplicate tracks on its own. The new “tracks” all reference to the same file. Sometimes there are up to 4 duplicates (see screenshot). As you can see on the far right of the image, it seems that every time I ran iTunes the tracks are added.
I did not change anything recently, but noticed that iTunes also updates my Cover Art, even though I explicitly unchecked the checkbox the settings…might be connected to my issue.
Any advice is much appreciated!
regards
modtastic

Is the media folder stored on an external drive? If you start iTunes with an external disconnected it will "notice" and mark all tracks as missing. If you then add media by scanning folders it won't notice that it is already connected to the files and will add them again. Next time you start iTunes you can have two tracks linked to the same physical file.
How do you normally add media to the library?
To check your library for duplicates use Shift > View > Show Exact Duplicates as this is normally a more useful selection. Keep holding down shift until you have clicked on the text Show Exact Duplicates or it may still use the loser definition. If you don't see a menu bar press Ctrl+B to reveal it or Alt to show it temporarily.
If you find that you have true duplicates you need to manually select all but one of each group to remove, or use my DeDuper script if you don't want to do it by hand. The script attempts to take account of different types of duplicates which need to be handled differently, merges playcounts and preserves playlist membership. Please take note of the warning to backup your library before deduping. See this thread for background.
iTunes doesn't generally do much in the way of background media updates, but it may reveal those enacted by something else, such as Windows Media Player.
tt2

My itunes creates duplicates in my iphone

Fisrt I purchased Anamanaguchi through my iphones's itunes. Then I created a ringtone using a song from that album. Then the original song keeps playing ringtone part. In my macbook, it plays full song, but in my iphone, it plays only ringtone part, even though I deleted and repurchase, that problem still occurs. I connected with my itunes in macbook again and now it gives my iphone many duplicate songs. I tried deleting that ringtone and reboot my phone but it is still the same. I really tried of it. I will never connect my phone to macbook again

Ed, I did have "Copy files to..." checked when I added music the first time. Per your advice, I've unchecked that box.
Question: What is the EHD?
You say I can delete the music not in my iTunes music folder, but all the duplicates are in there.
I've been looking in my iTunes player, selecting songs, and getting info to check its path in my hard drive. Depending on if the song ends in 1, 2, or with no number, I then know which version I can delete from the iTunes music folder. I can't even imagine how long it will take me to do this about 8000 times! I'm tempted to delete everything and start over, but reloading all my CDs will take me weeks as well...

ITunes creates duplicates when Adding a Folder

Lately, whenever I add a folder to iTunes it creates a duplicate of each song. I have to go in and delete each occurance -- very irritating. I have the Sound Check volume adjuster in Preferences enabled. Maybe it has something to do with that. Any ideas?

No, I do it the normal way. I simply use the Add Folder function and locate the folder on my computer, which is always in a separate directory. I do not put the folder in the music library. Usually, I delete the original folder once the music files have been copied. Basically, iTunes is duplicating the files for no apparent reason -- it's certainly nothing I'm doing.
BTW, once iTunes has completed copying to the iTunes folder, it adds a "1" to the duplicated file. For example, in the iTunes folder "Joy Division\Substance," the duplicated files are represented this way:
Joy Division - Transmission (1979).mp3
Joy Division - Transmission (1979) 1.mp3
You can't have two files with the same name in Windows' folders.
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ITunes creating duplicate files under a hidden folder named "Volumes".

It seems my iTunes program is secretly making a duplicate file in a hidden folder called "Volumes" on my laptop hard drive. It's now maxxed out my drive and I need to both remove the "Volumes" folder and make sure it doesn't get created and happen again.
Details:
Using a Powerbook G4 with an 80gb drive. Using iTunes 8. The iTunes library program is in the usual place on the lap top hard drive but the music library folder, where all the files get saved to, is on an external drive labeled "Media".
Clicking normally and searching around my laptop hard drive, I do not see or am able to access the folder named "Volumes". But I know it exists as I ran a scan program called jdiscreport and it clearly shows a huge folder, 45gb, named "Volumes". There are also a few old flacs in the "Volume folder also. The iTunes duplicate files are in identically named folders as the external drive: iTunes Music located within Media, located within Volumes.
When I rip a CD in iTunes (or the iTunes-LAME program I sometimes use), the files do go to the proper external folder as expected and as I've set in the iTunes preferences section. So why is iTunes also saving the same thing to this mystery "Volumes" folder on the lap top hard drive? How do I get rid of this folder without wiping my drive? How do I stop it from continuing?
Help, I have 2gb of free space left!
Thanks, James

Hi I am having a similar issue, It all started when I tried to restore from the Time Machine and it threw a error back stating that there is no disk available. I was wondering how come and went to find out what is happening and was shocked to find out that actually my entire Macintosh HD has a duplicate copy inside the /Volumes folder. I went to the XTERM to investigate and found that the / (root) has a Users folder where all my stuffs like pictures, music, movies, documents reside and the same data or content is duplicated in the /Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users folder
I first thought that it was only a link, but I later found that it is not a link and it is indeed a physical copy of all my User folders inside the /Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users folder and actually occupying my Hard disk space.
I am not sure how this happened or how it is duplicating itself. I am also afraid to delete the stuffs inside the /Volumes folder as it might crash my system (it is already hidden - I assume it is hidden for some purpose). Please suggest any options, how I can get rid of these duplicated data and how to avoid such duplication in the future.
Thanks
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ITunes creates duplicates in my iTouch...

I have a large number of Korean songs/artists in my iTunes library and I prefer to have the English first and then the Korean name/title. I've noticed that sometimes when I change the information for a song, I will have two of the same song on my iTouch but not in my iTunes library. (The song with the original information and another of the same song with the information that I changed) Does anyone else have this problem or know of a way to fix it? Thanks in advance.

Ed, I did have "Copy files to..." checked when I added music the first time. Per your advice, I've unchecked that box.
Question: What is the EHD?
You say I can delete the music not in my iTunes music folder, but all the duplicates are in there.
I've been looking in my iTunes player, selecting songs, and getting info to check its path in my hard drive. Depending on if the song ends in 1, 2, or with no number, I then know which version I can delete from the iTunes music folder. I can't even imagine how long it will take me to do this about 8000 times! I'm tempted to delete everything and start over, but reloading all my CDs will take me weeks as well...

ITunes creating duplicates in my Windows music folders?

I ran out of space on my local hard drive, so I moved iTunes and all my music folders to an external drive. I wish I had checked here first, and gotten the instructions to move my music, but I didn't. I just dragged everything to my external drive.
I guess I made a mess of this,because many songs were duplicated (and triplicated) in my music folders. I deleted everything and tried again. It seemed to work. This was a few weeks ago.
Tonight I noticed the space used on my external drive suddenly doubled from 30 GB to 60 GB. I started looking in album folders and I'm finding duplicates again. For example, it will list songs as "Honky Tonk Women", "Honky Tonk Women1", "Honky Tonk Women2", etc.
Can anyone tell me why this is happening, and how do I fix it? Manually deleting 8500 songs will take forever! If I sync my iPod, will I end up with duplicates in my iTunes library?

Ed, I did have "Copy files to..." checked when I added music the first time. Per your advice, I've unchecked that box.
Question: What is the EHD?
You say I can delete the music not in my iTunes music folder, but all the duplicates are in there.
I've been looking in my iTunes player, selecting songs, and getting info to check its path in my hard drive. Depending on if the song ends in 1, 2, or with no number, I then know which version I can delete from the iTunes music folder. I can't even imagine how long it will take me to do this about 8000 times! I'm tempted to delete everything and start over, but reloading all my CDs will take me weeks as well...

ITunes U duplicate entries and no artwork???

Hi Everyone,
I have recently got my iPhone 3GS and love iTunes U. The problem I have is, I downloaded The Internet at 40 by Open University, on my iPhone this collection has two entries and no artwork. I have tried to manually correct this in iTunes by editing all the items to have same sorting options, artwork, artist etc. But still no luck, I know it's not a huge problem but it is really bugging me! Can any bright individual help me????
Jay
Message was edited by: Jay Somerville

There are now several other threads running on this issue so I will close this one off by saying that there does seem to be a bug (/feature) that disables the speed button when there are no other active buttons in that corner of the screen.
If the video has captions, and hence a caption button in the lower RH corner, the speed button is enabled and any speed you set is retained for other videos you play; regardless of whether the speed button is disabled.
Not exactly a convenient workaround but possibly better than nothing until the bug gets fixed.
(Assuming it is a bug and not just a feature like the horrible grey bookshelf)

Itunes creating duplicates

I added all my apple lossless files to an empty itunes library from their location on my Nas drive but when i did this its created double of a lot of the files in the original folders and in itunes but in AAC these were 100% not in the folders prior as if i go to get info the create date is today any ideas why its done this? Thanks

Look at your iTunes -> Preferences -> Advanced. Is "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" checked?

Duplicate entries in iTunes display, but both entries point to the same physical location.

I've seen lots of discussion about how to remove duplicate copies of the same song, but my issue is different.
iTunes has duplicate entries in its database, but if I do show in finder, then both entries point to the same physical location.
If I delete one entry, then the other entry becomes unusable.
Any idea how I could clean this up? Its annoying because if I select an album to play, then each song gets played twice.

@zoo_bink I too have exactly the same issue however it's not affecting all my files.
One solution, which I'm contemplating, is to backup the iTunes Media folder, delete files, uninstall/reinstall iTunes then re-import the files. The issue may have arisen during initial import. (I'm not sure at this stage if Apple allow iTunes to be uninstalled.)
iTunes music collection is showing 58.95GB versus 57.11GB in Finder so it's not a massive deal but annoying nonetheless as deleting entries isn't an option.
Any suggestions welcome.
MacBook Pro, OS X 10.9.1, iTunes 11.1.3 (8)

Save_document_prepare duplicate entry in VBFA

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Save_document_prepare and spliting delivery for converting to bulk units and to do ATP check on storage location to allocate stock.Split is working fine however after saving it's creating duplicate entry in VBFA table
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ITunes Consolidation: Will it create duplicates of media files if they already exist in the new itunes destination folder but arent being referenced by the itunes library?

I have a macbook pro from fall 2010. I have been using my external HD as my primary itunes folder for the past 7 yrs ( i.e it is organized by itunes default categorization, etc). However, there is some overlap between my external HD itunes folder and my comps original itunes folder (probably 20-30% of my current library's media files were already duplicated there from when i first bought the HD and transferred files to the external, however they are mostly referenced from the external now). Also there are files in the comp's itunes folder that are not on my external (probably due to organizational mishaps and podcast downloads when not connected to the external, etc). I do not know how many files this is the case for.
Recently, i decided that i wanted to consolidate all of my itunes music into one concise folder on my macbook's HD to avoid these issues going forward. I also just bought a new external which i will use to back up my comp's itunes folder once i consolidate everything to the comp. But i plan on using the itunes folder on the comp going forward or at least using the consolidate fcn to avoid these issues.
Here is my dilemma. Prior to learning of the consolidate feature today, I changed the default itunes folder in settings to the original itunes folder on the macbook and then manually dragged all of the media files from my external itunes folder to the macbook's itunes folder. There were a ton of duplicates or overlapping folders with similar artist names, so i opted to have them merge all folders where possible. After doing this, i realized the itunes library still references these files that i dragged and dropped from the external since that is where my default itunes folder used to be. At that point i then read and learned of the consolidate itunes feature which seems like the best way to do this. But i am afraid that if i consolidate my library to my macbook's itunes folder now, will it create duplicates of the 4000 + media files i just dragged to the macbook's itunes folder which are already in the itunes library but being referenced from the old external??
Question: Is there a way that i can make these files i just dragged to the macbook's itunes folder become the ones referenced by the itunes library through the consolidate feature without creating duplicates of these 4000+ files? I want to avoid having three copies of these files (two duplicates in the itunes and the originals on the external). Furthermore, is there a best way to find out which files in the macbook's itunes folder are not being included in the library after consolidating everything to the computer's HD? Then after that, what is the best way to start backing this all up to my new external, so that this overlapping issue doesnt happen again? Im assuming i just need to make sure to consolidate first when changing itunes folders going forward. Thank you. I know that was a lot to read but hopefully someone can help with this issue.

In general:
- The best way to check if files are in a library is to drag the whole media folder to the library. If something was missed it will be added. If it is in the library is won't be added a second time.
- If you have a second copy of a file and iTunes does not currently list that specific file in its database then even if it is identical to one already in the database it will add it a second time. So if you have file xyz on the internal drive and the external drive and add them to iTunes you will end up with two entries for the same thing in iTunes because you really do have to copies of the files. While this can happen with two copies on a single drive, it will almost definitely be the case when you have a copy of a file on two drives because iTunes really sees them as two different things.
-Unless you know how iTunes works, avoid moving files yourself. Let the consolidate feature do all the file moving. Manually moving files can really mess up iTunes unless you know what you are doing and have iTunes set to not try to do it itself.
- There's no clean and easy way to delete duplicates. The best thing is to change practice so you don't create them. Here are references:
How to find and remove duplicate items in your iTunes library - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2905
http://dougscripts.com/itunes/itinfo/dupin.php (commercial)
Posts by turingtest2 about different types of duplicates and techniques- https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3555601 and https://discussions.apple.com/message/16042406 (Note: The DeDuper script is for Windows)
http://www.hardcoded.net/dupeguru_me/

ITunes and I seem to have created duplicate files. How do I clean this up?

Hello experts. I have a conundrum I'm too inexperienced to reason out. Hoping to tap your creativity.
I have a huge iTunes library I've created over the years. 50,000+ songs. No problem, other than my desire to whittle through it slowly and pare it down to only the 22,000 or so I want to keep as my primary library. I haven't gone through the effort of creating multiple libraries yet, I simply delete songs or albums from the library as time permits without deleting the original file. I figure iTunes' database will be my primary and in the long-game, I'll create a new library that holds everything, but for now I'll just keep whittling the dB structure away until I get what I want (this is a slow, multi-year project I'm undertaking -- no rush here).
Here's my problem:
Most of these songs are physically saved in the iTunes folder on an external hard drive. Some of the songs I added to my library from the iTunes store when the external hard drive wasn't connected to the Mac - so they are on the Mac's hard drive under the standard iTunes folder structure. I have the "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" and "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library" checkboxes checked.
As I said, I've deleted songs from the iTunes app, but told it to "Keep Files" so that I could listen to them in the future if I decide to re-add them. Yesterday, I ran out of space on the startup drive of my mac, so naturally, I figured I could consolidate any files on my hard drive over to my external hard drive and delte them from the mac.
In iTunes, I went to File -> Library -> Organize Library. I checked both boxes for "Consolidate files" and "Reorganize files in the folder..." I let this run overnight to consolidate my library into one place. Today, I found that the function was unable to complete due to lack of disk space on my external hard drive. When I went to check the external hard drive, I found that iTunes had duplicated all of the songs that were on the external hard drive in their existing folders.
For example, now I have a file under the structure: iTunes library -> Music -> Blue Oyster Cult -> Heaven Forbid -> Cold Grey Light of Dawn.mp3
And I also have a file under the structure: iTunes library -> Music -> Blue Oyster Cult -> Heaven Forbid -> Cold Grey Light of Dawn 1.mp3
So now the immediate problem... The consolidation didn't finish, so I don't know exactly how much duplication iTunes created. I checked my library, and sure enough, the song in the library is pointed at the duplicate file (the one with a 1 at the end). I don't have the option to just copy the iTunes library to another external drive temporarily (or not easily, at least). I checked out a bunch of duplicate file cleanup programs, but the ones I found (and I even purchased Gemini's dupe file finder/cleanser) don't seem to inherently choose the correct duplicate file that is linked to iTunes library dB. I can't realistically pick and choose from the thousands of files that have been duplicated.
I decided to change the advanced preferences in iTunes to an entirely new folder on the External hard drive. Then I could just go back into File -> Library -> Organize library and select only the "Reorganize files..." checkbox without selecting the "Consolidate files" checkbox. I figured this would just move all the files that are in the iTunes dB to the new iTunes folder. Ummm.... but no. Apparently this "Reorganize files" checkbox is only available if you select "Consolidate files"...? To be clear, "Reorganize files" is greyed out.
So to summarize:
1. Why did iTunes create copies of existing files in the exact same location they were in?
2. What is the right (and I pray easy) way to get my library back to the right size and consolidated into one place? I'm still dangerously low on disk space on the mac...
<sigh>
Thanks for reading through all this!
Tim
Mac Mini OSX 10.8.3; iTunes 11.0.2 (26)

See this thread for background on why iTunes can end up with duplicates and how they can be systematically removed. The script there is for Windows users and the "show duplicates" menus have moved around in iTunes 11, but the advice on clearing recently made duplicates should still hold.
As given in my older post "Reorganize library" is meant as a one time command to change the structure of a pre-iTunes 9 library into the newer layout that places music in its own subfolder of the media folder. Once used, if the option becomes available again that suggests that a file called .iTunes Preferences.plist in the media folder has been deleted or editied.
See also this post.
tt2

ITunes creates duplicate entries

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