Tidy up mess without damaging library

In trying to transfer my iTunes library from an old PC to a new one, I consolidated my library (MP3s and purchases were in separate folders; they're now all in the purchases folder). I can use the DVD backup in iTunes to get the files (with playlists and ratings) across, though consolidation has left the folder and file structure in a complete mess.
I can manually try to sort out the files and folders that have been messed up, but what's the best way to do this without having to then remove the file from iTunes and re-add it once it has the right filename in the right folder? or is there a way to have iTunes monitor your music folder, much like WMP?
Many thanks in advance!

Ya, iTunes will move things around actively as you change the tags.
For example, say you have a compilation album that is marked as a compilation. That album will be kept together in a "Compilations" folder (instead of an artist name). If later you change your mind and you select all the track and change them to NOT a compilation, now iTunes will treat each track by the artist name and will automatically move the files to folders by artist and create new folders if needed.
Likewise, say you have two albums in your collection and one you have by artist "The Pixies" and the other by artist "Pixies". iTunes will create a folder for each artist name. If you then go in and select all the tracks from both albums, type in "The Pixies" so they all have the same name. iTunes will move everything into the "The Pixies" folder and will remove the "Pixies" folder.
And finally, yes, it will rename folders as needed. So if you have Mighty Mighty Bosstones you will have a folder called that. If you then rename all the tracks to THE Mighty Mighty Bosstones then iTunes will rename the folder the put the THE in front.
Patrick

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How can I fix a (damaged) library file?

I just upgraded to itunes 5 last week. I opened itunes yesterday and it said my library file had been damaged so it renamed it with (damaged)and gave me a new library file without any of my custom playlists, etc... I lost a playlist thats really special to me, is there any way for me to repair my .xml library. I've tried renaming the (damaged) library to the regular library and itunes finds it and says its damaged... Also, I don't think all of the songs in my music folder are showing up. I own alot of CDs and it's going to be a huge pain to go through my 6400 songs and make sure every album is showing up in my .xml file..
Does anyone know a way to fix/debug my damaged .xml library?

Liz hello,
for your info....
What are the iTunes 4 library files?
The iTunes library is a database iTunes uses to organize your music. Two iTunes library files are created and maintained by iTunes for different purposes. They're both in the iTunes folder.
iTunes 4. - 4.8
/Users/username/Music/iTunes/iTunes 4 Music Library
/Users/username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml
iTunes 4.9 - 5.x
/Users/username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library
/Users/username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml
iTunes 4 Music Library/iTunes Library
This file is a database of the songs in your library and the playlists you've created. Some song-specific data is saved in this file. If you delete the file, iTunes creates a new, empty copy when you open the application, but any playlists, song ratings, comments, or other information you created is lost. The iTunes 4 Music Library/iTunes Library file is only used by iTunes.
iTunes Music Library.xml
This file contains some (but not all) of the same information stored in the iTunes 4 Music Library/iTunes Library files. The purpose of the iTunes Music Library.xml file is to make your music and playlists available to other applications on your computer. In Mac OS X other iLife applications (like iPhoto, iDVD, and iMovie) use this file to make it easier for you to add music from your iTunes library to your projects.

Moving a totally messed up iPhoto library

Hello,
I hope someone here can provide me with some guidance on this, as I'm about at my wit's end.
I have a client who has recently purchased a new iMac to replace her aging ~2008 iMac. The old iMac had at some point been serviced by a third-party company who for some reason
1.) reinstalled the entire OS (possibly for legitimate reasons... she doesn't know why)
2.) created a new user for the client, but misspelled her name
3.) put all of the previous user data into a directory on the desktop instead of where it should have gone (eg Pictures to Pictures).
Somehow, when they did #3, some of the content of the iPhoto library went into the new library in ~/Pictures, but some of it remained in the directory on the desktop. I realized this when I moved ~/Pictures from the old iMac to the new iMac. When we tried starting iPhoto, it would
1.) complain about permissions because of the misnamed user - repaired using iPhoto's repair permissions function, also reset ACLs for user's home folder via the resetpassword utility.
2.) even with the permissions repaired, it would look for certain files that were located in the directory on the desktop of the old iMac, and crash if you tried to link them (I moved the files to the new machine).
3.) when we could get it to start up properly, none of the photos would display correctly.
None of these issues could be repaired by iPhoto Library First Aid. I tried something like five times, and alternated between copying via the Finder and Carbon Copy Cloner, thinking that maybe one would be better about setting the correct permisions than the other.
None of this stuff worked, and the client has been left without a workable iPhoto library. Has anyone experienced issues like this? Moving an iPhoto library is usually such an easy procedure, but this time it's been an utter nightmare.

The problem sounds like the user (or someone...) has a mixed library - part managed and part referenced.
I would suggest: Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. (In early versions of Library Manager it's the File -> Rebuild command. In later versions it's under the Library menu.)
This will create an entirely new library. It will then copy (or try to) your photos and all the associated metadata and versions to this new Library, and arrange it as close as it can to what you had in the damaged Library. It does this based on information it finds in the iPhoto sharing mechanism - but that means that things not shared won't be there, so no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your events, albums and keywords, faces and places back.
Because this process creates an entirely new library and leaves your old one untouched, it is non-destructive, and if you're not happy with the results you can simply return to your old one.
The added advantage: it will list all the photos it can't find, so you'll be able to dig them out of the many folders and import them to this new Library.

How to reinstall iPhoto 5 without losing library photos/albums?

I had a hard freeze while copying photos from iPhoto 5 to desktop. After forced shutdown and restart, every time I try to open iPhoto it opens briefly and then shuts down, asking me if I want to send a report to Apple. Tried installing 5.04 update (no problems) but again, on trying to open iPhoto, it immediately closes.
Can someone advise me the steps to go through to "uninstall" what may be a corrputed iPhoto program and reinstall (I have the iLife CD/DVD install discs) without losing my library photos, albums, etc?

Hi bovie,
It is not the application that is giving you problems. It is a corrupt data file in your iPhoto LIbrary folder.
I am pretty sure you will have to create a new library and import the images from the old.
Close iPhoto
Rename your messed up iPhoto Library to "iPhoto Library_old"
Drag this library to your desktop
Hold down the Option key and launch iPhoto
This is the window you will get
Create a new library or choose a library to open
Choose to create a new library
Once this new empty library is open it is time to import the images from your old library
Go to File>add to library
Navigate to the old library on your desktop and highlight it in the window, then click the "open" button.
iPhoto will start importing the images from your old library
This is what to expect:
Your images will be imported in nice dated rolls. (make sure your view is set to sort by rolls to see it) There are a couple of caveats to this. You will get rolls named "Originals" These rolls will contain your video clips and your original images that you had edited. If you had RAW files they would be in those rolls too (I don't do RAW, so I don't know for sure) Delete what you don't want from those rolls. You will also get the jpeg pointer files to your video clips imported. They will just be jpegs and will not point to the video clips anymore as iPhoto made new ones when the clips were imported again. You can delete those. they should be in a roll right next to the newly imported video clips so they are not hard to find. The thumbnail files don't get imported as iPhoto makes new ones when the images are imported.
Once all you images have been imported, check through the library and make sure everything looks ok.
You can now start making your Albums, and do your keywords or any other organizational steps.
You can also delete the old library on the desktop.
It is also a good time to backup this new library to CD/DVD by burning the iPhoto LIbrary folder in the Finder, or copying the iPhoto Library folder to an external drive formatted for Macs, or copying the iPhoto LIbrary folder to an iPod.
Good luck!
Lori

Changing System Language Messed up my Library

iTunes is so messed up and bloated at this point that I'm regularly using Spotlight and VLC to play music!
Anyway, I switched my System language from English to Japanese and now much of my 'Classical' genre I had assigned became 'クラシカル' per Apple's whim. When I double-click a song, 'poof' it disappears. So am I now expected to switch over to クラシカル because of Apple's bug? No, I just reassigned the new クラシカル genre back to 'Classical,' but in the meantime wasting my day and feeling resentful.
I was always a Mac user because Microsoft expected me to do things THEIR way, not mine. While I initially strongly applauded the iPhone, I see now how iOS has encroached upon the desktop/laptop users too and is increasingly boxing us in. Settings are meant to be 'Set' which hopefully means having to do that task only once. If Apple is aggravating its loyal customer base with a flagship application, I can't say things are boding well there in Cupertino, at least not for me.
Yes, I get it. Apple keeps 'updating' the library by going on the web based on some new action. But I do not want it to do that. Sometimes I want it to update the library, but I want to tell it when I need that done. This is not user-friendly, it's corporate-friendly.
P.S. I tried to update my profile computer to OS 10.9.3 and Apple hasn't even updated that database yet! What the....???

In all my attempts to screw up iPhoto, I don't think I've ever lost a photo that was in the damaged library to begin with. That you can see your pictures in Albums, but not in the Library view is highly irregular. Are the images you see in the albums the full-size images, or are they just thumbnails of the original (that is probably no longer in the library)?
If you've ever enhanced or cropped photos in your old library, that would explain the duplicates. When an image is altered, iPhoto squirrels the original away in case you ever want to revert back to the unaltered version. When the library is rebuilt, depending on the corruption, those originals become orphans. iPhoto treats them as "found" images in your library, and they would show up as duplicates.

Messed up my library!!

I'm a fool!
Stupidly, I've messed up my photo heirachy.
I decided to use Backup 3.01 (the .Mac application) and clicked on the iPhoto quick key. It backed up quite fast so I thought I'd check the size. It was only about a Gbt. When I pressed get info on the user/pictures icon it showed about 8Gig.
So. I entered the dreaded user/pictures folder (big mistake) and it had a lot of albums and other weird named stuff, several years and a photo library folder and another photo library_1 folder. (the larger of the two - probably more recent?)
The photolibrary folder was exactly the size of the Backup target.
So. I decided to rearrange everything. I moved everything from the photolibrary into the photolibrary_1 and moved the photolibrary to the trash, then renamed photolibrary_1 as Photolibrary so that the Backup would find the right 'target'
Now I just get the frame outline of the photos and no content.
Is this recoverable?
Thanks.
PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

hi Steve,
looks like you have fun in that folder!
First thing to tell you. Don't trust Backup to backup your iPhoto Library. I don't. I manually burn my iPhoto Library folder in the finder to DVD, copy the iPhoto Library folder to my iPod and copy the same library to my iBook. if you have an external drive you would copy the entire iPhoto Library folder to the external. Backup.app does a full backup first, then incremental backups. I am not comfortable with that for some reason.
Backing up your iPhoto Library
1. Burn the iPhoto Library folder in the Finder to a CD or DVD
This method will give you a burned iPhoto Library folder that can be copied back to your computer to replace a damaged library. You can also use this method to backup an old library when you want to create a new Library to use as your current library.
insert a blank CD into your internal or external CD-RW drive and copy the iPhoto library to the CD icon on your desktop. When you drag the CD icon to the Trash/Eject button in the Dock, you are given the option to burn the CD. Click Burn and the CD is created. To burn a DVD backup of your digital images, use iDVD and a SuperDrive-equipped Mac
2. Copy the ENTIRE iPhoto Library to an external drive formated for a Mac. Do not use this as your only back up as the external can also go bad.
3. Copy the ENTIRE iPhoto Library to your iPod in disk mode
4.Creating your own CDs and DVDs for viewing in iPhoto
This method is a great way to back up Albums of older photos or even your entire library if it is small enough to fit on a DVD. This method will give you a library that will mount within iPhoto in the source column to be viewed. To import any images from this library they need to be dragged into your library in the source column.
Second thing, if you go into your Pictures folder there is one iPhoto Library folder there by default. You had to have created another iPhoto Library at some point in time. do you remember doing that? It must have been when using an older version of iPhoto. I think doing a rebuild does that for you and the new rebuilt library has the _1 extension on it.
The Pictures folder you can put any other folders in with images, etc. these do not affect the iPhoto Library folder that iPhoto uses. The only thing you shouldn't touch is the iPhoto Library folder in the Pictures folder. iPhoto has its own way of organizing thing s and changing anything in that folder will, well, give you what you got.
Now to recover...it depends on what you mean by recover.
if you mean to get your library back to the same state it was in before, then that is a maybe. If you can put everything back in the same exact place, then yes, maybe iPhoto will open that library. Most likely not, but it wouldn't hurt to try.
I will post a screen shot online so you can see how it is organized and this will help you try and reconstruct it.
This is a view of how the iPhoto Library looks in the Finder.
It is organized by Year folders. Inside the Year folders are Month folders. Inside the Month folders are the days of the Month. Inside the day folders are the photos you took on that day. If you imported video clips and RAW files on that day they will be in an Originals folder. If you have edited any photo imported on that day, the original will be in that folder also.
Once you reconstruct it, name it iPhoto Library and put it in the Pictures folder.
Launch iPhoto and it will try to open a folder called iPhoto Library by default if there are no other iPhoto Library folders in there.
Like I said, this is a long shot.
The easiest thing to do would bite the bullet and create a new library, then import the images from the messed up library.
Close iPhoto
Rename your messed up iPhoto Library to "iPhoto Library_old"
Drag this library to your desktop
Hold down the Option key and launch iPhoto
This is the window you will get
Create a new library or choose a library to open
Choose to create a new library
Once this new empty library is open it is time to import the images from your old library
Go to File>add to library
Navigate to the old library on your desktop and choose it.
iPhoto will start importing the images from your old library
This is what to expect:
Your images will be imported in nice dated rolls. (make sure your view is set to sort by rolls to see it) There are a couple of caveats to this. You will get rolls named "Originals" These rolls will contain your video clips and your original images that you had edited. If you had RAW files they would be in those rolls too (I don't do RAW, so I don't know for sure) Delete what you don't want from those rolls. You will also get the jpeg pointer files to your video clips imported. They will just be jpegs and will not point to the video clips anymore as iPhoto made new ones when the clips were imported again. You can delete those. they should be in a roll right next to the newly imported video clips so they are not hard to find. The thumbnail files don't get imported as iPhoto makes new ones when the images are imported.
Once all you images have been imported, check through the library and make sure everything looks ok.
You can now start making your Albums, and do your keywords or any other organizational steps.
You can also delete the old library on the desktop.
It is also a good time to backup this new library to CD/DVD by burning the iPhoto LIbrary folder in the Finder, or copying the iPhoto Library folder to an external drive formatted for Macs, or copying the iPhoto LIbrary folder to an iPod.
Good luck!
Lori

Messed up my library IPhoto 2.0.1

I completely messed up my library after reinstalling the operating system a while back. I neglected to read the instructions for restoring the library and everything was in a mess. Today I decided to reinstall IPhoto 2 and its upgrade to 2.01. I cleared out the old library and the pictures folder in my user folder was completely empty. Now as I carefully import the photos one day at a time, I discover that the dates in the new library folder are incorrect. My old library stored on an external hard drive has the dates the photos were taken. The photos display IPhoto in the correct order with the correct dates, but in the pictures folder the new library folder seems to be sorting them by the dates the files were modified. Don't know what's going on here. I'd really like to have them all in the correct order. Any suggestions? Is it time for me to buy the upgrade?

In all my attempts to screw up iPhoto, I don't think I've ever lost a photo that was in the damaged library to begin with. That you can see your pictures in Albums, but not in the Library view is highly irregular. Are the images you see in the albums the full-size images, or are they just thumbnails of the original (that is probably no longer in the library)?
If you've ever enhanced or cropped photos in your old library, that would explain the duplicates. When an image is altered, iPhoto squirrels the original away in case you ever want to revert back to the unaltered version. When the library is rebuilt, depending on the corruption, those originals become orphans. iPhoto treats them as "found" images in your library, and they would show up as duplicates.

How to recover damaged library?

I have been using iTunes since 4.8 and now using 5.0. Occasionally my library would corrupt for no reason. I wonder what is the best way to recover the damaged library, so I won't have to reload my iPod shuffle again and again. Thanks!

I had this happen to me yesterday. I had my iTunes 5 running for a few days without a restart. I rebooted the computer, then started iTunes. I have a very large library, and so the "Importing songs" progress box came up and was reimporting all my songs for some reason. When it got to the end, I got the Windows XP there was an error would you like to send a report to Microsoft screen. I said no. Then an iTunes error that said the library was corrupt and backed up to a file called ituneslibrary(damaged).itl. I don't know if that helps. This is the first time this has happened to me. I don't know why iTunes tried to reimport my entire library again. Peculiar.
Todd.

HT3231 I am migrating about 450GB from my MacBook White to my MacBook Pro, wirelessly and it will take over three days, having spent 18 hours on the first 15%. Is it possible to interrupt this migation without damaging either source or target?

I am migrating about 450GB from my MacBook White to my MacBook Pro, wirelessly and it will take over three days, having spent 18 hours on the first 15%. Is it possible to interrupt this migation without damaging either source or target?
On reflection I should have used a wired connection or migrated at a later time but is it possible to interrupt the process now and rerun with a wired solution without damaging either laptop?

I have two iTunes libraries - about 172GB that I keep on my MacBook Pro and 500GB+ that I keep on an external drive. If you wanted to do something similar - keeping that precious internal space to a minimum - you can just create two libraries and hold down the option key when opening iTunes: this allows you to select which library you want to open.
Just a thought...
Clinton

How to save and restore Music from iTunes without using library ?

Could yous help me please ?
I use an 60 giga iPod I started to fill it with my CDs without using library, just directly in it, I delete the Music in the library after record to save place on may computer. I have nearly 7 megas of Music stored. To fill 60 Giga it wille takes at least 6 months on my rest time. At the end if i loose my iPod or if stolen or broken or if i want to buy a new iPod of 80 Giga for example to store more Music ? How can i save Music in my iPod on a Hard Disk or DVD and restore on it or on a new one ? Is it possible or not allowed by iTunes to avoid Music copie ?
Thank you for your help....

Frank31,
Syncing music to the iPod is a one-way street, as discussed in this article:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302155
If you are concerned about using up your computer's hard drive for music, and are using iTunes 7, you might consider creating your library on an external drive if one is available.
This article discusses creating an alternate iTunes library in another location, such as another drive:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304447
Thank you,
Nathan C.

I am a senior citizen newbie to apple. I have just downloaded my pictures from my camera. How do i remove my usb port from my mac pro without damaging anything?

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The iphone is a "plug and play" device. It is safe to unplug it without "ejecting it". If you want to be sure it is safe open itunes and under devices next to your iphone you should see the eject symbol like a line with an up arrow above it, click that. Once you no longer see the iphone listed under devices it'll be safe to remove.

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So you can install Elements without interfering with CS6.
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Doesn't matter. You don't really need it again other than as a drink coaster. It probably contains outdated software anyway.
You can always download the CS6 installer from the Adobe website when you need to re-install CS6.
http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/policy-pricing/cs6-product-downloads.html

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Best of luck! And since you didn't back up your data previously, all your data is lost. Make sure to use the free backup services of iCloud or iTunes.
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Jeeze. I have to be able to repair permissions once in a while, but I don't want to risk losing my music!

In all my attempts to screw up iPhoto, I don't think I've ever lost a photo that was in the damaged library to begin with. That you can see your pictures in Albums, but not in the Library view is highly irregular. Are the images you see in the albums the full-size images, or are they just thumbnails of the original (that is probably no longer in the library)?
If you've ever enhanced or cropped photos in your old library, that would explain the duplicates. When an image is altered, iPhoto squirrels the original away in case you ever want to revert back to the unaltered version. When the library is rebuilt, depending on the corruption, those originals become orphans. iPhoto treats them as "found" images in your library, and they would show up as duplicates.

Tidy up mess without damaging library

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