TS4036 items in Library cannot be located on PC

I have items listed in my iTunes library that cannot be located on my computer. When I look at the Purchased - not on this computer sestion in the iTunes Streo, they show as "downloaded." How can I get these items back to my computer?

Hi there trikytrev!
I have an article here that can help you troubleshoot this issue:
iTunes repeatedly prompts to authorize computer to play iTunes Store purchases
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1389
Thanks for using the Apple Support Communities. Have a good one!
-Braden

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Items in library cannot be copied to iPod as file cannot be converted

When syncing my ipod classic I get a message saying that a number of songs can't be synced as the files can't be converted. Also if I attempt to play the same songs on my macbook I get a message saying they cannot be played because my computer is not aurhorised, but it is?

Hi there trikytrev!
I have an article here that can help you troubleshoot this issue:
iTunes repeatedly prompts to authorize computer to play iTunes Store purchases
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1389
Thanks for using the Apple Support Communities. Have a good one!
-Braden

I keep getting the following message The iTunes library cannot be found or created. The default location for this file is in the iTunes folder in the music folder.

I keep getting the following message The iTunes library cannot be found or created. The default location for this file is in the iTunes folder in the music folder. All of my playlists have disappeared and I am trying to recover them however I now can't even open iTunes!

Hi crazymaiden,
I have two articles for you here that should be able to help you troubleshoot this issue with your ability to launch iTunes:
Troubleshooting iTunes installation on Mac OS X
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2311
iTunes: How to re-create your iTunes library and playlists
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1451
Take care, and thanks for visiting the Apple Support Communities.
-Braden

Recently purchased song and another I transfered into my ITunes library vannot be set up in a playlist.I get the message"file cannot be located".Originally I could listen to the purchased song but now that will no longer play.What do I need to do to ?

Recently purchased a song from ITunes and another that I downloaded from a CD will not transfer to a playlist and will not even allow me to listen to the songs.I get the message "file cannot be located"What can I do to get my system to locate the file?Originally I could play the songs from my desktop and I was able to transfer to my IPad.

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.
-Go to "Advanced" inside of the "Preferences" window, found in the "Edit" drop-down. You can also access Preferences by pressing Ctrl+, (Press Ctrl and the comma key)
-Change your iTunes Media Folder Location to something simple, but on your computer. I use C:/iTunes. Make sure "Keep iTunes Media Folder Organized" and "Copy files to...." are both checked. You can close Preferences now.
-Now, drag and drop your music from your hard drive into your iTunes library. iTunes will automatically add the music to your library, as you would expect, and also creates a copy of each file to place into that iTunes Media Folder you just created.
Shouldn't have any more problems...

HT201625 All my media is on a portable hard drive. The drive letter has changed, and now my library cannot locate anything. Is there a quick way to re-link the library to the new drive location?

All my media is on a portable hard drive. I installed Itunes on a new computer, and scanned the portable hard drive, thus creating a new library on the new computer. The portable drive now has a different drive letter. Now, the library cannot locate any of the songs because when it was created it (I assume) linked to the other drive letter. Now, from what I understand, I can select a (song, album etc) and then browse to the new location. But I have thousands of songs.
I need a way to re-identify as the whole group. And because this is a portable hard drive, this could happen on a daily basis, so I know there must be some other process I am missing. I guess I could delete the library and rescan the drive and create a new library every time I reconnect the hard drive, but that seems inefficient and time consuming. Oh, Windows 8.1 and Itunes 12.1.1.4, if that matters.
Am I missing some simple step to this?

See turingtest2's user tip on Make a split library portable - the best approach is to have the complete library (database, artwork, etc. as well as media) on the external drive. This layout is not only robust against changes in drive letters, but also means that the external drive can be used with any system running iTunes - just hold down SHIFT while starting iTunes and select the library on the external drive.
A quick fix, of course, is to use Windows' Disk Management facilities to reset the external HDD's drive letter to match the locations stored in the iTunes database.

A file shows up in my Recent Items, but I cannot locate it elsewhere

A file shows up in my Recent Items, but I cannot locate it elsewhere. When I click on it, nothing happens in Pages. Nothing, literally. It was located in Documents, but is now longer showing up there. Please help.
SM

Follow Alex's advice.
The Recent Items list is like the human memory and car keys. You know that you saw your car keys the last time you used them, but you cannot remember where you misplaced them — now that you need them.
Recent Items only knows where the document was at last use. If the document is renamed, moved, or deleted, that file activity is not updated in the Recent Items list.

A lot of songs in my library have an excalmation point to the left of the song. This means the song cannot be located for syncronizing even though they can be played. I have deleted all of them and started over but the problem still exists.

A lot of songs in my library have an exclamation point to the left of the song. Apparently this means the song cannot be located for syncronizinf to the IPOD but yet they can still be played. I have gone so far as deleting every song and then importing them. Same problem. This is not just a few songs but at one time was in the hundreds.
Has anyone experience this?

The exclamation point indicates the media is not where iTunes expects it to be.
What happened just prior to this issue starting?

Re: "iPhoto cannot create a new library in this location because you do not have enough access privileges."

I was trying to create a photo stream in iPhoto (attempt to use the iCloud) when this message box came up: "iPhoto cannnot create a new library in this location because you dont have enough access priveleges" What do I have to do to correct this?

DennisP426, this is the iMovie discussion group. I'm trying to get this discussion thread moved to iPhoto instead of iMovie, should be moved before too long. Thanks.

I went to use my Itunes and suddenly i get files cannot be located ..do you want to locate .. well i cannopt find them what Happened they were al working before did i hit somethin or do something wrong please help have over 1700 songs missing

I went to use my itunes music which i have had for years ..Suddenly they are all gone .. leaves a message cannot not be located would you like to locate .. I say yes and they cannot be found this is a list of 1700 songs .. Please help me .. where did they go? And why! .. Need help desperately .. Must fix this ... Hope just a button i hit! Thank you ...
Jelliapple@ Optimum.net ...

Look in Windows Explorer, Music Library, My Music, iTunes, iTunes Media, Music which is where your library should be located. If it isn't there make sure you have the first two items on the advanced tab of the preferences ticked, then on the file menu select Library and Organise Library which should put all music remaining on your PC into the iTunes library.
Alternatively, if you can find where the music has become relocated to, move it into the automaticall 'add to iTunes' folder within itunes Media and it should then go back into your library.

The iTunes Library cannot be saved. An unknown error occurred (-50)

I updated iTunes from 7.2 to 7.3 using Software Update and all went well except for one thing, now when I launch iTunes it rebuilds the iTunes library each time I launch iTunes. The other thing is that once it rebuilds the library it displays a warning; "The iTunes Library cannot be saved. An unknown error occurred (-50).
I downloaded the standalone updater to no avail. I have also repaired permissions using disk utility - no luck.
Background info.
A week ago or so, while I still had iTunes 7.2 I cleaned all my user and system caches, ran all the maintenance scripts and repaired permissions. I used MainMenu, a third party app that lives in the menubar, to perform these functions and faithfully followed all the instructions to restart once or twice depending on the routine and closing all my apps accordingly while doing these maintenance routines etc.
I noticed one thing after this, my iTunes icon had turned into a generic app icon. Knowing iTunes 7.3 was a slated release this Friday I knew the icon issue would resolve itself after the update from 7.2.
What can I do to fix this? Please help.

I somehow got through the -50 error but a few days later podcasts when downloading, would crash iTunes 7.3 altogether.
There was a post here somewhere and I apologise to the poster in advance but I am unable to relocate it.
Here is the solution that was proposed and it seems to have worked for me.
Read the following in its entirety before proceeding:
1 The first thing I did was unsubscribe to all my podcasts by selecting them all and clicking unsubscribe at the bottom of the iTunes window.
2 Quit iTunes
3 Navigate to YourHomeFolder/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Podcasts and move the Podcasts folder to your desktop or some other convenient location.
4 Open iTunes and re-subscribe to all your podcasts.**
5 Once all the podcasts finish downloading navigate to the Podcasts folder sitting on your desktop and move its' contents back to the folder you originally moved them out of. If you had setup the iTunes preferences to keep all your podcasts after they download be careful not to overwrite items as you move them back from the desktop/Podcasts folder to the new Podcasts folder.*
**In my case, the list of podcasts in the iTunes window got kind of messy, I mean some podcasts displayed the GET button when even though they had already downloaded or I already had them on my system and other small things like that - this was the result of re-subscribing. You can select those that you don't want to GET and simply delete them.
*You may have to move one podcast folder's contents at a time, again be careful not to overwrite. If you return things carefully you will have no problems.
iTunes 7.3 has behaved perfectly ever since.
I hope this helps. If my instructions are confusing please chime back.
By the way, command (apple key) clicking any of the collapse triangles both in the finder and in iTunes will expand or collapse all items, this will come in handy as you define anything that might have gone funny after re-subscribing.

Remove ALL Songs that cannot be located

Windows 7, Itunes 10
I have a large itunes library with thousands of songs that now have the Circle Exclamation Point next to them (cannot be located). The ! does not seem to be a filterable column - so I cannot group and remove (using Shift click select approach).
I want to do the following:
1) Ensure all unlocatable songs have been identified and marked with the "!"
2) Select them as a group and delete them.
I tried putting the entire library into a single playlist and playing the play list - assuming each song would be "checked" - no luck. As soon a the play list hits the the first song with an "!" next to it - playlist stops.
Please help me (windows 7 - no mac scripts)
Thanks.

In addition to the tip above these tools will help find files that have been moved/deleted/lost from iTunes and need adding back into the library (or permananently deleting).
*Adding new items/removing orphans*
Try iTunes Folder Watch or iTunes Library Updater. Folder Watch is much faster on the adding files front, can be set to run in the background and includes a useful exclusion feature, however it’s really slow at removing orphans. iTLU is better for this although doing it manually after looking at a list of proposed removals generated by Folder Watch is probably faster still. iTLU can also be set to update iTunes when you've used 3rd party tools to change tag info.
tt2

I have just restored data from an external hard drive, but half of my iTunes songs are getting the error "original file cannot be located." Where are these files?

My Windows 7 PC just had to be reformatted, and I have retrieved all of my files from an external hard drive. About half of my iTunes library is working fine, the other half pop up the error statement "original file cannot be located." If they haven't come off my external drive, where are they?

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.
Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to get info, then cancel when asked to try to locate the track. Look on the summary tab for the location that iTunes thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drive(s). Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions.
Alternatively, as long as you can find a location holding the missing files, then you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes .
tt2

Most of my library 'cannot be found'-how do I get it back?!?

I haven't found any solutions to this problem. I downloaded the new itunes 9 and everything is fine except one big problem. Over half of my music library cannot be found. There's a little exclaimation point beside the songs and when I double click on them it says the origional file cannot be found and it can't be located. I've searched and searched my computer and the lost songs aren't there. It's not just a certain type of song file either. They're recently bought songs and ones I bought several years ago. Some are downloaded from cds and others are from the itunes store. I'm desperate for answers and I really don't want to buy all of these songs again. Also when I plug in my nano 4th generation with all of the songs on it, I can play them perfectly but I can't add them to my library. I've also never backed up my library, but from now on I'm deffinately going to. Please help!
Message was edited by: rayban1996

All the information including exact wording of messages is very helpful if you have it.
Usually you can not transfer purchases from iPod to computer because the iTunes account was not authorized on the computer you are transferring to. iTunes->Store->Authorize Computer
Look at the song title that will not transfer. Go lookup your iTunes account purchase history. Is the song listed? If not then you did not purchase with that account and you need to find the one it was purchased with.

After installing the latest itunes update most of my music cannot be located. A box pops up and says the song cannot be found. What can I do?

I installed the latest itunes update and now I can't play most of my songs. A box pops up that says it cannot be located and asks me if I want to locate it and when I click on Yes it gives me all my files on the computer (dropdown box) and I don't know how to find them. Some of my songs will still play.

turingtest2 wrote:
The "missing file" thing 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.
Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to get info, then say no when asked to locate the track. Look on the summary tab for the location that iTunes thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drive(s). Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions. I can provide a step by step guide if you give me the two paths.
In some cases iTunes may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps and locate the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links. Alternatively, as long as you can find a location holding the missing files, then you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes.
tt2
Having the same issue.. All of playlists were deleted as well as the majority of my music can't be located. It seems the only music that can be located is the music I have purchased directly through itunes/iphone.
The location where itunes thinks my music file is:
"file://localhost/C:/Users/MY NAME/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/"
The actual location where my music file is:
"C:/Users/MY NAME/My Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/"
This is weird because I have not moved my music and it was working fine before I upgraded to the new iTunes...
My steps:
1) update itunes to latest version
2) plug in old phone take backup in itunes
3) plug in new phone and restore from that backup
I didn't notice the issue until I looked on my phone and all of music was missing from my phone along with playlists (minus the music I purchased directly from iphone/itunes.
Then I looked in itunes in my music library and saw itunes can't locate my music files. I also tried replacing the previous itunes library file as noted in the support link above but didn't do anything..
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,

There is a problem with the photo with the filename "null". The full resolution version of this photo either cannot be located or is corrupt. Please replace this photo or delete it from your book.

Absolutely INFURIATING.
I have spent absolute hours building a photo album for the first year or my sons life. Sorting through quite literally thousands and thousands of images. Got a brilliant looking album using 177 of them.
Now everytime I try to check out it won't get past page 1 of building the book.
It says the following "There is a problem with the photo with the filename "null". The full resolution version of this photo either cannot be located or is corrupt. Please replace this photo or delete it from your book.".
The images all look perfect. I have even tried taking them out and re adding the first page images from the library.
Same problem.
This is so annoying. So far I have NOT been happy with this iphoto application having nothing but problems with missing thumbnails. Corrupted images. Things that have never happened to me using a windows machine.

Do the filenames contain special characters, like "ä,ü,..." or white space or are the vry long? Is there anything special about the image format? Try to export the edited versions in that case and reimport it with a different, shorter filename.
For testing, create a new book with only the images you want to check.
If this does not fix it, try rebuilding. Depress the option and command keys, launch iPhoto and rebuild the library.

TS4036 items in Library cannot be located on PC

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