ITunes duplicates all of the songs in my library when I try to import it

Question

I haven't used iTunes for years.  I've just installed the latest iTunes on my computer and am trying to add songs from a previous library by dragging into iTunes.  Problem is, it carries out some sort of conversion on the files and, in the process, duplicates every song into the iTunes library.  Anybody know why, please?

Answer 1

Dragging over the old files if they are outside the designated iTunes Media folder is usually seen as a request to make local copies inside the iTunes Media folder.
Make sure you have updated to iTunes 11.0.1 (or later).
Enable the menu bar with ctrl-b if needed
Use Edit > Preferences > General > Show list views for all media
In Music use the Songs view, or select the List view for other media/playlists
Use View > Display Duplicates or, more usefully, hold Shift and use View > Display Exact Duplicates.
Keep one of each repeated group of files and don't send to the recycle bin unless you are sure that there are multiple files on the disc as opposed to multiple entries to the same file.
There is also my DeDuper script if you don't want to do it by hand. This can preserve ratings, play counts, playlist membership, etc. which are lost in a manual clean up. Please take note of the warning to backup your library before deduping. See this thread for background on deduping and the script.
tt2