# iTunes unable to find song location and now have duplicates



## kd_California (Oct 13, 2008)

Long time PC user, newbie to the Mac.

Here is my problem:
1. I have duplicate songs in my iTunes Library
2. My original playlists can't find the original song.

Here is how i think i got there:
1. When things worked, i pointed my iTunes to an external hard drive - Let's call this hard drive (A). This hard drive was PC formated, so i couldn't write to it.... only read.
2. Recently bought a new hard (B). Copied iTunes folder to NEW hard drive (B) - reformatted original, and then moved the iTunes folder back to hard drive (A).
3. From iTunes, sometime during the above step, i changed the destination of iTunes songs to the MacBook iTunes folder. Then i changed it back to the hard drive (A).
4. Once iTunes scanned through the songs and completed this step, every song still had a '!' next to it. None of them could be played because the original song could not be found.
5. I then went to File > Add to Library..... i can see now this step created 'duplicates' in my iTunes Music library. So now, each song is listed twice, one can be played, and the other has the '!' All my playlists still have the '!' and i can no longer sync these playlists to my other devices (iPhone/iPods).

Can someone help me solve my problem?


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## parasolution (Sep 23, 2006)

In your preferences tab (edit -> preferences -> advanced, this is for windows), where does your iTunes folder reside? Is it set to the external drive? I assume you want it to reside in your external drive. Is the "Keep iTunes folder organzed" and "copy music to iTunes folder" boxes checked?

If the "keep iTunes folder organized is not checked, check it and close the window; iTunes will organize itself automatically, but make sure your folder is set correctly (the drive you want the music to reside in). Once its done, close iTunes and restart iTunes again. That should take care of the exclamation marks on the songs. 

As for duplicates, you have to go song by song and remove them. But you need to make sure that the duplicate songs are actually duplicates in your music folder. For example, if "Song A" is listed twice, Right click on the song and go to Get Info for each song. At the bottom of the window, "Where" the song is located is listed. If 2 of the same songs exist in the folder, one track will say "Song A" and the other track will say "Song A 1." At this point when you delete the song, you can also delete the file when iTunes asks to delete the file. Now, if you click on get info on both songs and the it says "Song A" for both songs, you can delete one of the tracks from the list, but don't delete the file when iTunes asks, otherwise the song will removed. Does that make sense?

The easier way to go about this is to start from scratch, but you lose your playcounts.


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