ITunes Unable to Locate Music File

I have a few hundred songs in iTunes that have been loaded over the years. Their source is CD's and iTunes. Tonight on an airplane, I was listening and noticed that I had red circles with red squares inside of them next to song titles. When I selected these, they were not available. This happened more and more as i selected different songs, eventually I was left with just a handful of songs. Immediately when I got home, I snyched to my computer and it said that there were items unable to synch because iTunes was unable to locate the original file. (it did restore a few but still over 100+ missing files). The titles are still listed.
However, I am unable to play any song in itunes on my computer. Just on my iPhone. When i ask it to loacte it directs me to a catroot file from 2009???
I have not added or removfed songs in weeks and it has been working fine (iPhone and computer) for months.Any help in finding these files or restoring them would be appreciated.

Use the iTunes command File > Add Folder to Library, and navigate to the folder containing the music.

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ITunes unable to locate music files saved on external drive

Hi all,
This is proabably something incredibly simple but my iTunes was installed on to my laptop wih music added till my memory was all used up.
So I bought an external drive, and re-added all my music saving it to the external drive, my iTunes however remained installed directly on my laptop.
This worked fine initially as long as my external drive was selected in the Preferences section of my Itunes, but recently all my albums are available but it says that Itunes is unable to locate the files, even though none of them have been lost or deleted from the external drive.
Ive tried everything I can think of - does anyone know how to rectify this?
Thanks....

I switched computers and tried to reload all my backed up itunes files. It loaded the files fine the first time. After I logged off the files disappeared from my Itunes. Apple tech told me to add itunes folder to library. It worked fine until i logged off again. I tried it several times because my files never stayed on itunes. Finnaly I added two new CD's into my library and I went to file Libray and I entered consolidated Library. This brought everything I had before and then some to my itunes library. I logged off, shutdown and even hibernated and my files still remain. I was able to create playlist, my movies, podcast, there all there. Hope this helps.

TS1362 Unable to locate music files

I've been using my ITunes for years. My stereo is hooked up to my PC and all I ever did was open ITunes, click on a playlist and enjoy. I recently got an Iphone, after I hooked it up..... I Tunes can not find any of the music on my playlists!!! Nothing has changed.....I can not for the life of me figure out why now....it can't locate music files to play like it has for the past 7 years!!! PLEASE help! I have even uninstalled and reinstalled ITunes just in case that helped...nothing helps...I can't play my music now.

Tried this with no success. Can anyone confirm where I locate it from?
/Music/iTunes/iTunes media/Artist/Album/song.

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.
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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 unable to locate original file for music after update. How can I find it

I am not able to play any of my music since the last update to itnes.It gives me a message that the original file canot be located but when I say locate it comes back with nothing. Any suggestions?

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tt2

ITunes unable to locate original files

I just moved the 'iTunes Music" folder on my hard drive on to a second larger hard drive that is internally located in the same computer because there was not enough space for all my video on the smaller drive. I didn't want to separate my music from my videos, so when I moved the whole folder, I went into preferences and changed the location of my library to where it was on the new drive. All of my videos instantly worked and I didnt have to go threw and relocate them manually by browsing, but all of my songs are not working, and it says it cant find the original file. I could browse and locate them manually but that would take a long time because I have over 2,000 songs. I have iTunes version 8.1.1 if that is relevant.
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I switched computers and tried to reload all my backed up itunes files. It loaded the files fine the first time. After I logged off the files disappeared from my Itunes. Apple tech told me to add itunes folder to library. It worked fine until i logged off again. I tried it several times because my files never stayed on itunes. Finnaly I added two new CD's into my library and I went to file Libray and I entered consolidated Library. This brought everything I had before and then some to my itunes library. I logged off, shutdown and even hibernated and my files still remain. I was able to create playlist, my movies, podcast, there all there. Hope this helps.

Itunes unable to locate music

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Itunes unable to read/locate music files as they have been converted to HP Connected Music files - can anyone assist ?

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Itunes seems to be unable to locate original file to play songs. Songs are in the itunes media file and playable direct from file. Preferences/advance file location is correct. Some files are playing and others aren't with no obvious pattern.

Itunes is unable to locate original file when attempting to play music. Songs are in the itunes media file and playable direct from there. Preferences/Advanced file location pointer is correct. Some songs play but most don't. I did move files around a bit in an attempt to share music with another account on same computor, however this did not work so have returned file to original location. Please help, I am way outside my feild in this one. Ta.

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I have recently moved my iTunes library onto a network drive and iTunes is happily playing music from the new location.
In iMovie on the other hand all I get is "The song xxxxxxx could not be used because the original file could not be located.".
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I have recently moved my iTunes library onto a network drive and iTunes is happily playing music from the new location.
In iMovie on the other hand all I get is "The song xxxxxxx could not be used because the original file could not be located.".
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Thanks.

HT3842 Does iTunes store the original music file and copy it into a separate folder? If i delete the original file from finder will it remove it from my iTunes library?

Hi, on my last PC when transferring music to my new MacBook Pro i noticed i had about 6 duplicated of each song in every album i took hours in removing them.
I Just wondered Does iTunes store the original music file and then copy it into a separate folder?
If i delete the original file from finder will it remove it from my iTunes library or vice versa. I didnt want to lose any music like i have some how managed to on my old computer.
Or should i keep both files of it in the Music folder and also iTunes library folder?
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DrewPowell wrote:
I Just wondered Does iTunes store the original music file and then copy it into a separate folder?
It does both at the same time.
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You can drag a file to /Music/iTunes/iTunes media/Automatically add to iTunes/ folder.
This will add to iTunes and move it to /Music/iTunes/iTunes media/.
I keep a shortcut of this folder on my desktop then simply drag files to the shortcut to add to iTunes.
Then there are no "extra" files around.

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ITunes Unable to Locate Music File

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