The Song Could Not be used because the original file Cannot be found!!!!!

Hello,
I have my music on a separate hard drive and all of a sudden some songs randomly cannot be found. There does not seem to be a pattern to this. Everything is set up correctly but yet I have to manually go and find songs. I've tried everything I can think of but yet im still missing files. The files are there and I dont want to have to this individually each time.
If anyone has any ideas I'd love to know them
Itunes 8.02 (2.0)
Thanks
Keith

Okay, this may be more info than you need, b/c I was having playlist and "!" problems simultaneously...
I only just now had my Mac Genius appointment tonight, but yes, all seems finally fixed. Here is what I learned. They had been experiencing a lot of appointments related to this recently, and if you have all your music on an external drive as it seems most of us do, you greatly increase your odds of having this issue. They didn't reveal WHY iTunes is so crappy at seeing/remembering where you've put stuff. I had lost all my playlists, AND couldn't get iTunes to find/read my music. It was an either/or fix, meaning they couldn't seem to fix these issues together. The long fix was this:
(1) (a) Import "previous library" to get your playlists (under Music / iTunes / select the most recently dated iTunes database file; this lived on my local computer's drive, which may or may not be the best place for it -- if your computer dies, you lose your playlists if you haven't been backing them up); this should open your old playlists in iTunes; (b) export each individual playlist to save them
(2) THEN hold down "option" as you open iTunes; this will prompt you to "select library"; navigate to direct it to open your actual music files (more than likely on your external hard drive if you're like me experiencing this problem).
(3) File/Library/Import Library for each of your previously saved playlists
In other words, I couldn't have my old playlists AND my music. Even another Mac genius agreed on this fix, and that he'd manually directed his computer to find each of 5,000 tracks individually, in order to have the playlists AND the music. (Does this make sense?) The second Mac Genius that I worked with somehow magically went under File/Library/Consolidate Library to be able to marry these two things w/o having to back up my playlists (avoiding steps 1b and 3 as described above). He seemed surprised that this really worked and that we didn't have to do everything described above. So if you can figure out how he did the "consolidate library" thing, then GREAT (none of the other Mac Geniuses knew about how to do this, and I don't know how he did it either)... but if not, maybe try the 1-2-3 steps above... or just go see your local Mac Genius I am finally sooooo pleased this issue has been resolved, but it took 3 diff. appointments.

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Because the location for each song in your library is on your hard drive. If the hard drive isn't there, how can iTunes play it?
You'll have to move/copy the music from your hard drive to your computer's hard drive.
Basically, EASIEST way to do all this, if you don't care about your play counts, etc...
-Delete EVERYTHING from iTunes, so that your library is now empty.
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what happened to all my songs (almost 2000) How can i get them back into my music library?
Please help - i do not want to spend another week downloading all my cd's onto my computer !!!!!

Try my script FindTracks. Select a few of the missing files to start with then run the script. Choose No at the first prompt so that you can check how it works track by track, then confirm or edit the location of the media folder where your files are. Once you are happy with how it behaves let it process larger numbers of tracks automatically.
tt2

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Recently bought a new computer and all my music appears in iTunes as well as on my computer in a saved folder. When I try to play the music in iTunes I get an error that reads"the song could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?" Hope you can help me solve this issue.
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This happens if the file is no longer where iTunes expects to find it. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the file, or that the drive it lives on has had a change of drive letter. It is also possible that iTunes has changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout, or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place.
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tt2

What does it mean when a box pops up saying "The song could not be used because the origional file could not be found. Would you like ot locate it?"

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Frustrating - *** apple?
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This lead me through music>itunes>itunesd media to an Empty envelope with the song name.
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I went to my external hard drive updated with Time Machine & was again lead to an empty folder with the song name that has an ! beside it in iTunes.
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4)
Checked iTunes for songs that needed to be downloaded - nothing.
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Not in trash bin
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There are not multiple copies of the same song in my music library.
songs are apparently missing & so not able to be put into a new folder.
like most, i truly do not have time to take time out to find multiple songs or i purchased via itunes .
so frustrating.
Help very much appreciated.

Previous purchases may be unavailable if refunded or if no longer on the iTunes store.
•Downloading past purchases from the iTune Store, App Store, and iBooks Store:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2519
•iTunes - Apple Support:
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/
•iTunes: Apple Support Communities:
https://discussions.apple.com/community/itunes
Sorry that your missing purchases no longer appear available.
Not sure what other recourse you have.
Good luck & happy computing!

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It sounds like you're seeing something similar to this picture:
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iTunes: Finding lost media and downloads
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1408
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The Song Could Not be used because the original file Cannot be found!!!!!

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