Mac Itunes 10.2.1 dozens of songs ! in front, itunes can't find them

After updating, with no other changes, DID NOT rename or change path to external NAS where songs are located, dozens/hundreds of songs can't be found by itunes. 2click on it and locate and say use for rest but no work, it would take me hours and hours to reset path for each song, imported an album it couldn't find, now it lists at least 3 duplicates, last time this happened I just deleted all the playlists and songs, then reinstalled everything - what a pain, there must be a better way and I can't believe I need to reinvent the wheel here.
Should I just pay apple to give me an answer or is there someone that has a definitive way to resolve this? Thanks for the upcoming answer.

not sure it will work for you but you might want to give the following a shot:
_*iTunes Track CPR v1.3*_
This script attempts to locate the files of so-called "dead tracks"--iTunes tracks designated with (!)--that you assume are not actually missing but are still located in the iTunes Music folder in their "iTunes File Order" (Music -> Artist -> Album -> file.xxx)."

Similar Messages

How to recover song that are "lost", itunes can't find them even though I have downloaded and played them before

Does anyone know how to recover songs that itunes has "lost"?
I downloaded them, synced my ipod, songs were added and I was able to play them.
On a recent sync the songs are suddenly "not found" according to itunes. I can't locate them in the itunes folder, so I have no idea where itune put them. BTW-this is not the first time itunes stored songs in a random directory...... Since itune can't find them, they were deleted from my ipod

Look, I understand I still need a card attached to the account. The problem is, it won't accept my card because I only have 87 cents in my bank account right now.
If I had known there would be so much trouble with the iTunes card, I would have just put the cash in my bank account in the morning instead of buying an iTunes card (I didn't expect the banks to be open on Thanksgiving of course).
Apple will only accept cards that have a balance. The balance is so small in my account that it won't accept it as a valid card.
I'm going to have to contact Apple anyway to reset the security questions. That's obvious. Your answers were not exactly helpful. You didn't tell me anything I don't already know, but thanks for trying to be helpful.

Having moved my Itunes folder to external hardrive and resetting where it is in preferences Itunes can't find them and I have to direct it to every song - I have a months worth of songs on there so this will take avery long time - any ideas on what;s up?

Having moved my Itunes folder to a new external hardrive and resetting where it is in preferences Itunes can't find them and I have to direct it to every song- a little ! pops up next to the song and a dialogue box says Itunes can't find it so thn i have to manually search for it - I have a months worth of songs on there so this will take avery long time - any ideas on what's up?

nellydee wrote:
Having moved my Itunes folder to a new external hardrive and resetting where it is in preferences
That's not how to do it. You don't move stuff then set the iTunes prefs > Advanced.
Once you move the /iTunes/ folder, hold Option, launch iTunes and select Choose library... and select the ITunes folder on the external.
This will use the iTunes library file in the iTunes folder you moved.
Don't change iTunes prefs > Advanced.

Apps on iDevices, but iTunes can't find them

I sync both an iPhone and iPad via iTunes on a Mac. There are a number of Apps I use on both devices that show in iTunes grey-ed out. When I double click on them a dialog box shows up that says iTunes can't find the App, would I like to locate it. It is not in my Mobile Apps folder. What happened? Where do I find it? The iTunes App Store shows that I have purchased and downloaded the apps. How can I get them back into iTunes... and not lose any data that's in them?

Follow the instructions here or here.
(113257)

Have sansa mp3, Windows media player on old pc now want to move music(mp3) to ipod touch and Mac itunes can't find a way to do this

I have a Sansa mp3 which I used Windows media player to download music to. Family made the move to Apple. Now need to move mp3 music to itunes on Mac. Can not find way to do this. MP3 device does not show up when connected to Mac by USB. Please help!

In the iTunes folder there should be a folder saying "Import to iTunes". It is either in Music/Itunes or Music/Itunes/Media. Put the music you want on your iPod in this folder, start iTunes, and sync.

HELP - My Songs Are there but iTunes can't find them!!!

I just moved my iTunes library to a different drive and iTunes just gives me "!" next to the song files and tells me the song file isn't there.
Help!!

Edited:
Did you go to iTunes Preferences/Advanced/General/ and show iTunes the path to the new drive? If not, you need to do that.
The ones which will play are the ones iTunes can find. The " ! " ones are the songs iTunes thinks it can't find. If you quit iTunes and restart your system, the next time you open iTunes the checks should be gone.

All songs in My Playlist but iTunes 'can't find them'

New computer with Windows 7. Downloaded new version of iTunes without plugging in my ipod classic. When new version was installed I dragged and dropped my 'old' iTunes file from my backup into my 'new' itunes file. Attached my ipod and was asked if I wanted to aurhotize to this computer which I did. It then asked if I wanted to sync newly purchased or erase (not quite a quote). I opted to sync newly purchased. After that I only had the one newly purchased on my iPod and all the songs in my playlist were still there in my playlist. So I will admit I tried syncing a few more times - no go. Then I tried restoring my iPod to it's orginal settings and syncing again. After that I had no songs on the ipod and all the songs sitting in my playlist. Then I tried playing a song off the playlist on my computer and got the mesaage that it couldn't find them. I'm lost and frazzeld after having to restore everything else to this new beast and had saved my ipod for last but now I'm just hoping I haven't lost it for real. Any suggestions out there?

If you are in the UK, and the film studio allows re-downloading, and you are signed in with the same account that you bought them with, then they might show under the Purchased link under Quinklinks on the right-hand side of the iTunes store home page for re-downloading - if they don't show then check to see if they are hidden (hiding and unhiding).
But you should be keeping and maintaining your own backup of your downloads and noy rely on being able to re-download any item as they are occasionally removed from the store by the content provider (film studio, tv company, record company etc).

Transferring iTunes files to external hard drive - now iTunes can't find them

I believe I have really effed up my iTunes library. My basic question is once the links in iTunes have been broken are there only two ways to get them back (one being going through every title and locating it on the drive vs two starting fresh and copying all the song files into iTunes and recreating all the play lists).
I have over 10,000 titles accumulated over many years and sorted into a couple dozen playlists to keep track of each family member's music on various pods / phones etc. I was running out of internal hard drive space so I tried moving the files over to an external drive in order to free up the internal drive. I thought I was following the instructions correctly, but something has gone horribly wrong. I'll try to take you through the steps as best as I can.
I had changed the iTunes preferences to show the external drive, and when importing new songs they were stored on that external drive. I thought everything was working fine as all the files showed in the Finder on the external srive so I deleted the files from the internal drive. Of course this was the wrong thing to do as at that point iTunes could only locate the newly imported files and none of the old ones.
So I began to panic and searched the support and communities and tried a number of things that were recommended including copying the files back to the same spot on the internal drive, changing the preferences, and I also tried consolidating the files under the File / Library / Consolidate FIles. This made another folder in the iTunes folder called music (my previous folder was called iTunes music inside the iTunes folder). I have tried these steps on both the internal drive as well as the external drive. So now on either drive, iTunes will reconzie maybe 20-25% of the files. I think these 25% have been moved to the new folder iTunes and the file number has a 1 appended to the end. So now for each file I have 2 to 4 copies. One copy is in the Itunes music folder on the internal drive. A second copy is in the iTunes music folder on the external drive. I believe that iTunes cannot find either of these ones. The third copy with a 1 appended is in the Music folder on the internal drive and the fourth copy (also with a 1 appended) is in the Music folder on the external drive and as I said I think iTunes "sees" these files.
So my question is, is there only two ways to fix this (both of which are incredibly time consuming) - one to point each unknown file to the external drive (about 8,000 files at least to do), or the other is to start from nothing and drag all the music files in and recreate the playlists (I think this would be more work since some of the songs were on multiple playlists). Is there nothing else other than a month of solid work in front of me!?!

just download one of the following apps which will solve your problem of converting videos as this apps plays almost every video files, first 2 apps are paid ones
GOOD player (very good)
AV player
VLC player (free in tunes)

Moved Itunes to External hard drive and Itunes can't find them

I went to the Apple Store at the Grove on Friday. An employee there printed out these instructions:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301748
I followed the instructions. All my music is on my external hard drive now (My Book). When I open Itunes all the songs in the entire library have a circle with ! in them.
It says the song could not be used because the file could not be found. When I search My Book the song plays and the ! is removed. I have several thousand songs. Do I have to do this with each and every one?
Also, I can't import new cd's now.
Can anyone help?
Thanks, Vicki

Try this -> iTunes Track CPR v1.3

I recently bought some songs and now i can't find them.they are paid for what do i do?

i purchased some songs at itunes store and was charged for it. my computer went down and now those songs are not showing up. what do i do

Did the ever download? If not then click Store>Check for Available downloads.
If they did download and are now lost:
Downloading past purchases from the App Store, iBookstore, and iTunes Store

Deleted songs from Library and can't find them!

Songs from iTunes were wiped out so I wanted to take the music from my iPOD and transfer it to the iTUNES Library. I was told to do to the iPOD folder on my PC and find the hidden folder that contains all of my songs (The folders were titled F00, F01 etc.) and copy all of those folders to my PC somewhere (I copied them to My Computer somewhere). I closed all of that out and went to the iTUNES Library. I proceeded to go to File/ Import Selected File, then go to were I had copied the folders, click on the first folder, highlight all of the songs and then click on Open. All songs were downloading to the Library. Once in the middle of this process, I didn't want to continue scrolling to view and copy the additional folder so I started deleted the folders with songs I had already copied. I then updated my iPOD/ iTUNES and then received a message that some of the songs could not be found. Is my music gone forever? There were about 20-25 songs that I purchased that I lost. Please help.

You deleted the folders before iTunes finished adding the songs. So they're probably gone for good.
You could try an undelete utility, or check your Recycle Bin. But I wouldn't get my hopes up.

Itunes can't find songs

Wonder if anyone could help with a problem. I have my iTunes library on an external hard drive. I always try to make sure I connect the drive before opening iTunes but on one occasion I didn't and I found that iTunes changed the library to the default location on my C drive (in my docs/my music folder). I instantly changed this to point to the one on the external drive (H) but now I am getting question marks next to loads of songs indicating that iTunes can't find them. I can't work out why this is??
Does iTunes do something else when moving the location of the library?
Is there a quick way to get iTunes to see all these tracks again without re-importing the tracks from the external drive into iTunes?
Regards
Chris

Whit the library location pointing to your external drive, you can click on file at the top of itunes and use add to library. Then in the window that comes up, navigate to the drive and folder that houses your music. If the music is exactly the same, itunes should re-associate the music back to itunes without duplicating entries.

ITunes can't find any of my songs now that I upgraded to 7.6

Did the upgrade last night and when I opened it today to play music, all my songs are marked with a "!" and iTunes can't find them. I suspect I may need to reimport them but then I'll have duplicates which I'll need to go through and delete. Is there another way? Thanks.

When you create a smart playlist there is a checkbox so you can select only checked songs. So you could make a playlist easily by matching the rules of date added. If you sort your itunes music folder by date then you can see the start and end dates you will need for the playlist.
Once done, check its all alright, and then edit the smartlist (right-click the name in the left bar) and un-check live updating so it won't automatically change itself if you check/un-check more.

HT203288 Itunes can not find my music files. But I can with Windows . Lost over 8 hours trying to fix stupid itunes, Even removed it and reinstalled. Still nothing.

But I can using Windows.
Lost over 8 hours today. Still not working
Even deleted itunes and reinstalled.
My Music files are still there. But itunes can not find them.

Empty library or library full of broken links?
tt2

How do you get album artwork? I have like two thousand songs and about 95% don't have cover album artwork and when i try to get album artwork it says "Itunes can not find album artwork" "an unknown error occurred-609" what do i do?

How do you get album artwork? I have like two thousand songs and about 95% don't have cover album artwork and when i try to get album artwork it says "Itunes can not find album artwork" "an unknown error occurred-609" what do i do?

Perhaps try the "Error -609" section in the Specific Conditions and Alert Messages: (Mac OS X / Windows) section of the following document:
iTunes: Advanced iTunes Store troubleshooting

Mac Itunes 10.2.1 dozens of songs ! in front, itunes can't find them

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for