Songs can't be found?

Last night I imported 4 cds. When I go to play the songs in the library, I get a message saying the songs can't be located. If I go to the iTunes music folder, they are all there. I can get them back in the library by going one song at a time by clicking on them in the folder, but that will take a long time. Two questions:Why did this happen, and is there a quick way to fix the problem having the library talk to the folders?

Thank you so much for writing.
When you say:
> I fixed it by clicking on each song in the library,
and kept clicking thru iTunes music to get to the
newly-created folder, then clicking on each song
there,
Did you do this in Windows Explorer?? Or did you do all that in iTunes?
Then what you wrote about renaming the songs in "Get Info" makes so much sense. I could not figure out why some worked and did not have the exclamation point, and why the ones I manually typed in did not work.
Please let me know if you did the other part thru Windows or thru iTunes. Thank you very very much!!!
~Andrea
PC Windows XP

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When I try to sync, it will tell me that some of my songs can not be found, almost 100 of them. Any suggestion how to fix this?

Why when I try to sync to my ipod, it tells me that some of my songs can not be found when they are in my library?

iPod touches or any iDevices from Apple sync only to one computer. If you sync to a different computer, all your music will be replace with the music from the new computer's iTunes. If the music were purchased from iTunes, you can re-download them again otherwise the music on iPod touch will be deleted. Do you have iTunes backup?

Song can't be found because orginal file cant be found?

Song can't be found because orginal file cant be found?
It asks me to locate the files
Now what do I click on!!
Ill post pictures if you need em

maybe try going to my documents -> my music -> itunes -> itunes music, and it should be in there. hope this helps.
i am having a similar problem, it cant find hardly any of the songs in my library and i have to go locate them every time i want to listen to a song.

Can't copy a song from library into playlist. Screen message says "song can't be found." I know it's there, how do I access it?.

Can't copy a song from library into playlist. Screen message says "song can't be found." I know it's there, how do I access it?.

I fixed this issue (with help from tech support) and it involved several things.
After adding a song to iTunes, right-click on the song in iTunes and select "Update iTunes Match."
OR go to the iTunes menu-->Store-->Update iTunes Match.
Maybe that's the reason, it just hadn't updated to the cloud.
OR maybe it's not a high-enough bitrate file. This happens to me because most of my tunes are home-recorded.
Sometimes converting to .mp3 or Create AAC version might work. (You do this with a right-click in iTunes, and then you will want to remove the original file from iTunes.)
There is an iTunes Preferences setting, under General Preferences called Import Settings. Try setting it to AAC Encoder and iTunes Plus. That (I think) causes imports to be slightly better quality.
Good luck! The tech support person at Apple is requesting that a knowlege-base article be written about this.

Some songs can't be found-but others in same dir are OK!

It's like this: I moved my account to my new MacBook Pro from my older Powerbook G4. Same dir structure across the board. Only thing I can think of that's different is the CPU...
My iTunes library is transferred alright, all my playlists and what-have-you. Some songs, though, can't be found. I double click one to play, I get the 'Do you want to locate it?' dialog. I open the .xml library file in TextEdit, and the Location for the particular song is the correct one: my song resides where it should.
Anyway, I relocate the directory containing those songs to the Desktop, and iTunes finds the ones that it couldn't, and misses the ones that it could (all residing in the same dir). BTW, the .xml file doesn't change at all through all that...
Any ideas as to what is going wrong?
BTW, I would really love to know how iTunes manages to keep track of all the added songs, when it does work. Up until now, this is what I've done and iTunes has had no problem: place new songs in a particular location, add it to the Library through drag-n-drop, then move the original file to the final location. iTunes is set to not keep music folder organized and not copy song files in the iTunes dir structure. How does it do it?
Many thanks.

Same thing after moving Music folder to an external drive. Some songs were there while others were not. "Fixed" it by re-copying music folder to its default location on the local drive. Now everything plays even though iTunes prefs. point to the external folder. It seems as if iTunes just prefers music in that default location. Will probably re-point back to the local drive and keep it there as this is sch a common problem.

I am trying to transfer songs from my ipod to my iphone but it says the songs can not be found on the ipod but I can play them on the ipod.

The iTunes library says I do not own them and they can not be found on my iPod. But I can still see and play the songs on the ipod. But when I try to sync them they do not appear.

It is not possible to sync music directly between an iPod and an iPhone. The music must be in an iTunes library and that must be used to sync the music to each device.

Songs "can't be found" in iTunes

About 7 months ago, I spent a considerable amount of time putting a large collection of CDs into iTunes after purchasing an iPod classic. Because I thought the files would take too much space for my hard disk, I bought an external hard drive. I thought I had successfully set this up as the place for all my iTunes files. Sometime since then, this setting was lost in iTunes, and Edit > Preferences > Advanced > iTunes Music folder location reverted to a My Music folder on my C drive. I have now copied all the files from there to the external drvie and have attempted to change the iTunes Music folder location to match. So my .m4a files are now in folders like K:\iTunes\ABBA\ABBA_ The Definitive Collection, and the Musci folder location is K:\iTunes
But when I choose an Artist and Album in iTunes, and then click on the first track to play it, in about 75% of cases I get a dialog telling me that the track cannot be played because the original file cannot be found. If I accept the offer to locate it, I can always do so by choosing folder names to match the Artist and Album name, and then choosing the right track. And iTunes does remember the track location after that. But with about 500 albums, you can imagine how much I wish to do this in order to relocate about 8,000 individual tracks, one by one (locating one track on an album does not locate any of the others, as far as I can tell). Is there anything I can do to automate this process, and any explanation for what's gone wrong? If I connect my iPod to add recently purchased tracks to it, what happens to all the tracks that "can't be found"?
I'm currently using iTunes 8.0.2.20

You get exclamation marks or dead tracks because iTunes can’t find the file. This can happen for a number of reasons:
The song file or a folder in its path was renamed
The song file or the folder it is in has been moved
The song file has been deleted
The device containing the song files e.g. external drive is not accessible or the drive letter has changed.
A changed drive letter is a common cause of the problem if you are using an external drive, but that should affect all tracks.
Assuming you are not changing things yourself, to you have any other music player software that is looking at you music folders and possibly doing some organising?
If the music is in your iTunes folder, there have been reports of iTunes getting in a muddle if it is set to keep your iTunes Music folder organised. You could try turning it off.
A simple way to get everything back is to add your itunes Music folder with File>>Add folder to library. This adds all missing tracks, but leaves the dead tracks which have to be removed in another way.
Watch out if your music is not in the iTunes folder - you need to make sure that Copy to iTunes Music folder when adding to library is not checked if you don't want the tracks to be copied.

Upgraded iTunes to 6.0.1 & now some songs can't be "found"

I completed a recent upgrade to iTunes & several songs now have an exclaimation point next to them. When I click on them, I get an error message that says, "Song can't be used because the original file could not be found."
All of the songs were imported from CDs but not all of the songs from that import were affected (they play normally.)
I can reimport many of them, but some of them were from the library, friends, etc.
Any thoughts?

Roberta hello,
The remedy is very easy...
Open the iTunes folder and select the iTunes Library file and type command -D
this will make another copy for safe keeping, if anything goes wrong you can always return this copy ... leave the duplicate file where it is.
Start iTunes in the normal way and open the preferences > advanced > general tab... set NOT to copy files when adding to library and DO keep iTunes Music folder organized.... OK your changes.
From the file menu select 'add to library' and choose the iTunes Music folder.
After iTunes has checked and made any adjustments needed have a look and see if any problems still exist ... come and let me know Roberta ... TP
iMac 800MHz PowerPC G4 17 Flat Screen. G4 iBook. Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Error: [songname] was not copied to iPod because the song can not be found

I know that from my searches, this topic has been touched on but I am unable to locate a solution. So my apologies in advanced if asked and answered.
When updating, iTunes tells me that some songs cannot be copied because they cannot be found. However, the songs are clearly in the iTunes folder. I also have a backup copy of my entire library and adding them back from that library does not work either.
Here is what I have discovered about these files: some are songs that were in an album by themself and then the rest of the album was added later. Some of the songs are in the format of .mp3 and some are in the format of .m4a. None of the affected songs are purchased from iTunes; none of my purchased music is problematic.
This problem seems to be growing. At first it was just one song, then it grew to 48 and then to 59. The songs play just fine in iTunes, but cannot be copied to the iPod. I checked the properties of the songs, and none of them are read-only. There should not be a problem with permissions on this computer as I am the administrator and gave myself full priveleges on installation.
Clearly there is something wrong with these songs that prevents their being copied. Does anyone have any idea what is going on?
At the risk of getting flamed, please don't respond just to gripe about Apple, etc. I am looking for solutions, not commiseration.
Thanks in advance!

Replying to my own post since I don't see how to edit.
I have some more information that may help if someone can determine the significance.
I EXPORTED one of the playlists that contains 2 of the above described problem songs. I converted the text file to a table and then noted that in the last column (column 27) that there is a PATH to the song. All other songs do not have this in the path. The path does not refer to the current location of the file, either.
The first song that this happened to does not appear on any playlists so I did not discover this.
The rest of the songs got "lost" after I added some old playlists back to my Library that I had exported. In one particular playlist two of the songs had the wrong path in the Location column, and neither was found. However, the rest of the songs had a blank field in that column and were found just fine. So.... I think I may be onto something, for all those who have this problem. However, the only way to actually do this without a supercomputer would be to make a playlist of all the not-copy-able songs, export the playlist and carefully look for that path data.
I would love to hear if anyone has tried this for this problem. I don't want to keep replying to my own posts, but I honestly think I cracked this "bug". The problem appears to be that the data in the database gets errors in it during the moving/addition of a song from another place on the system, regardless of the settings in iTunes. In my case, I consolidated my library, allowed iTunes to organize my music and I am a fanatic about spelling and so forth for song titles and related information.
--CRN

Error message: Song can not be found.

I went to play a song I originally purchased on iTunes years ago and have played many times, then got this error message:
"The song "White Room" could not be used because the original file could not be found."
What do I do now? Can I re-download the file from the music store? If so, how? Thanks.

Hello Auroria,
After reviewing your post, it sounds like you want to download a past purchase. I would recommend that you read this article, it may be able to help the issue.
Download past purchases - Apple Support
Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.
Have a nice day,
Mario

When I try to sync my iPhone 4 with iTunes on my comp it tells me the song could not be found. So I'll manually find and ID it for iTunes. It asks me if it can find the rest but never can. Now it can't even sync playlists because songs can't be found.

Hi guys. When I try to sync my iPhone 4 to my iTunes on my computer it tells me that it can't find the files. So I'll manual dint he song and identify it for iTunes. iTunes will then ask me if it am identify the rest for me but it never can. Playlists on my phone have disappeared because I can no longer sync the songs because iTunes can't find them. This all started when I put ringtones from iTunes onto my phone. Maybe it somehow deleted the music library because I get is exclamation marks by all the songs which no longer play ( which is most of them)
Please help me this is so frustrating!!

Hello Courtney,
Thank you for the details of the issue you are experiencing when syncing your music to your iPhone. It sounds like iTunes is not able to locate the original file for the song to transfer it to your device. I recommend reviewing the following articles to locate you music files on your computer:
iTunes: Finding lost media and downloads
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1408
Where are my iTunes files located?
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1391
Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.
Best,
Sheila M.

Songs can't be found on computer or hard drive - disappeared overnight.

I synced my iPod yesterday. Today some songs - that synced successfully yesterday - are now no longer 'able to be found' on my computer's iTunes. I have just subscribed to iTunes Match. Any suggestions? A large number of songs have just... disappeared. Not happy.
Last week I transferred all of my music to an external hard drive. I thought that this could be the problem, but since then I have synced my iPod and there were no error messages and the currently missing songs still live on my iPod. I've searched my computer, as well as my external hard drive, with no sign of the files.
It's quite a few songs, and I am traveling and so no longer have the original CDs that they came from.
Have they simply disappeared to iTunes song heaven?
Thanks!

Did you recently erase and/or reinstall the OS?
And, some details are needed: model/year Mac, Mac OS version running now and which version originally).

Problem syncing music from itunes to ipod... error message says songs can't be found. Any suggestions?

any suggestions?

That means iTunes can no longer locate the track in the specified location. See this article for more information on locating lost tracks and downloads.
iTunes: Finding lost media and downloads
B-rock

A maojority of my library can nor be found?

I have over 500 songs on in my itunes libray and have been successfully downloading, creating playlists, and then downloading them to my ipod for 8-10 months now.
The only computer I use for itunes and the music store is my business laptop. When I travel I have been able to hook up to the inernet and download,play, update ipod with no problems
This past week I was on business and downloaded some musice while in the hotel room then went down to a conference room to play some of them at a breakfast and suddenly a message appeared asking for my username and password??? I tried and tried and despite loging in corectly could never get the music both new and old to play.
So i got home and back to the office and the same thing! It is only recognizing like 20% of my entire library? When I try to click on a certian song and it says "this song can not be found? And once again asks me to re input my username and password etc and once again NO MUSIC
My ipod even messed up in this process. Now my ipod lost songs as well. Let say I had 50 songs in a Jazz folder. Well now there are only 2? When I look at that same jazz folder in my lbrary on my laptop when in itunes I will see all 50 songs but when I try and play one of them the message comes up?
So I can't figure it out? Thoughts I am having...
When I allow my office mates to share my music at work (but not giving them my password) could his mess uo the whole "5 machine max can be authorized thing?"
Also I almost never even burn a CD from my library so the concept that I have used all this music "too many times" and now it i dead is urealistic I think??
I am thinking it has to do with eitehr synconization of my laptop tp my work newtrok? Or maybe my ituens music folder is not connetcing to my library somhow?? Last but not least i did do an itunes update about 30 days abgo so maybe late dec eraly January that seemed to download onto my ipod fine
Please help! I am dyin without all these tunes I have workes so hard to compile
Compaq nc6230 Windows XP

Thanks! Tried this all this morning. Now what it looks like is that when i first started my itunes account i started it using my home computer and home email address. I downloaded abou 20 songs on that account/email address/computer. Right there after I got my busienss laptop and decided to not use the home account any longer and start a new one knowing that I would be using my laptop as my primary account. So, I started a new account, new credit card, new email, new computer. Moving forward I used this account for 500 plus songs with no probelm.
Well now when I click on a song the user name and passswrod pops up but already laid in there is my home emial address? The old account?? it is almost like itunes thinks that all this music was purchased on my old account? But it was not! i am sure of that. So even when I put in my old pass word it still does not play the music.
Oh yeah and when i went to my current account info meaning my business account with busienss email that i have downloaded all this music on it is saying I only have 1 computer authorized ???
Total confusion! Any other ideas

When i got a new PC and transferred ITunes, when i tried to sync my 3G nano, it keeps saying 100 files can't be found and I can't get my checked songs to sync. Is it a problem with software or my ipod or ??? I am leaving on a long trip in a week

When I got my new computer and transferred I tunes my songs in my play list play on my computer, but when I try to sync to my 3g Ipod, it only syncs a few albums and gives me a message that 100 song files can't be found. So only half of what I want is on my Ipod. I leave on a long trip now and really need the Ipod full of my music. I've tried reloading some CDs and replacing the old ones on there, but still they won't sync. What do I do?

You need to copy everything from the old computer or your backup copy of your old computer to the new one.
The iphone will sync itunes content and pics with one and only one computer at a time. If you sync to another, then it will erase the current content from the iphone and replace with content from the new computer.
The music sync is one - way -computer to iphone. The only exception is itunes purchases. Without syncing: File>Transfer Purchases
If you sync contacts and calendars to a blank computer, then they will be erased as well.
Copy everything from the old computer.

Songs can't be found?

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