What does an exclamation point next to a song file mean?

I've been using iTunes for several months now and just today noticed that I have exclamation points next to a number of songs. When I go into my iTunes Music folder and try to find those files, they're not there.
Yet I haven't deleted any of these files.
What gives? I've got over 33,000 songs and don't want this to become a reocurring problem.
I did repair permissions with iTunes open just before I noticed the exclamation points b/c I was having a problem with copying new audio files into iTunes and it was suggested here that this would be a fix.
Could that have caused the exclamation point problem?
Either way, if someone can tell me how to fix this so that all of the exclamation points go away and the files reappear in my finder, I'd appreciate it.

Do you have an External Hard Drive connected to your iMac?
If you have some other storage device connected, you may have Saved these songs with the "!" next to them on THAT storage device.
If you DO have an external drive connected, try turning it on (or reconnect it) and bring up iTunes again, they will play if they were Saved to that external device.
Once you have identified if this is what has happened, you'll want to go back into iTunes Preferences and make sure it's set to Save to your 'Macintosh HD'(or whatever you call your primary Hard Drive).
iMac G5 Bluetooth, 512 Mb Ram Mac OS X (10.4.4)
iMac G5 Bluetooth, 512 Mb Ram Mac OS X (10.4.4)

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Exclamation point next to song

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The ! means hat the actual music file can't be found
Try:
- Reset the iOS device. Nothing will be lost
Reset iOS device: Hold down the On/Off button and the Home button at the same time for at
least ten seconds, until the Apple logo appears.
- Unsync/delete all music and resync
To delete all music go to Settings>General>Usage>Storage>Manage Storage>Music>Tap edit in upper right and then tap the minus sign by All Music
- Reset all settings
Go to Settings > General > Reset and tap Reset All Settings.
All your preferences and settings are reset. Information (such as contacts and calendars) and media (such as songs and videos) aren’t affected.
- Restore from backup. See:
iOS: Back up and restore your iOS device with iCloud or iTunes
- Restore to factory settings/new iOS device.

What does an exclamation point next to a song file mean?

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