iTunes Help REquest

[rhamilto]

Hi there. New member here.

About four years ago, I downloaded iTunes onto my desktop to store and manage my music, as I acquired my first iPod.

About two years ago, I procured a laptop and an external hard drive; and copied my music library and data across to the laptop – so I could manage my iTunes and iPod on EITHER the desktop or the laptop.

The two libraries became a little out of sync, as I ended up favouring the laptop.

This wasn’t an issue because I managed the music using the external harddrive.

This then crashed and I lost the data, including a few albums that I had downloaded from iTunes straight onto the external harddrive; which are now lost.

ANYWAY.

I now have a new laptop. I have downloaded iTunes and copied my music library onto a NEW external harddrive.

Inside the new external harddrive, I have a “Back-Up Copies” folder that is most likely those files that I have on both the OLD laptop and the OLD desktop.

THE PROBLEM:

The new iTunes on the NEW laptop has automatically synched and read both the normal album data, and the ‘Back-Up Copies’ folder – creating duplicates.

I have since gone into the NEW laptop harddrive and moved the ‘Back-Up Copies’ folder OUT of the iTunes music folder.

I now have around 4,000 duplicates, where one track name is correct, and in the right place, and can be played from iTunes; and the other “cannot be found” (b because I moved the ‘Back-Up Copies’ folder out of iTunes Music).

I can see all the duplicates by using the “Show Duplicates” function in iTunes.

Is there a quicker, more convenient way of deleting the duplicates rather than double clicking EACH AND EVERY song to identify whether it’s the right one, or the one that “cannot be found” anymore?

 

[Anonymous]

dougscripts.com has scripts for all these kind of issues.

Edit: Sorry mac only though bu the exact script is here.

 

[rhamilto]

Thanks - but I'm running MS Windows.

New laptop is a Vaio AR71S running Vista.

 

[Anonymous]

A quick search gives me this for PC.

 

[ianandyr]

Tend to agree with the response on your other thread. Taking care to ensure you don't delete the files on your external drive by disconnecting it, delete your current iTunes library, re-create it and then re-sync to your iPod.

That way you'll be guaranteed clean, won't have to mess about with scripts and I daresay save yourself enough time to knock up a nice souffle for dinner.

 

[Anonymous]

It would take me all day to do that method and around 1/2 hour to do mine.

 

[John Duncan]

rhamilto:
Thanks - but I'm running MS Windows.

New laptop is a Vaio AR71S running Vista.

hang on, hang on - I'm fairly sure you can create a playlist of songs where the file is missing (at which point you can just delete all the entries) - will have a look.

 

[Anonymous]

If you delete a song from a playlist it doesn't delete it from the library, or is there a method I'm missing?

 

[John Duncan]

Except you can't. Damn. Working it...

 

[John Duncan]

If you don't use ratings, you can do this:

Select all files in library. Right Click/Get Info. Set the rating to five, click OK - missing files won't be rated. Sort by rating, delete all the ones with zero rating.

If you do use ratings, select a field in the Get Info Screen that you don't use - like "Comments" - I did this, entered "blah blah blah", and updated - then you can add the "Comment" field to the music view, and sort by it - all the non-missing files will have "blah blah blah" as a comment.

 

[John Duncan]

And an alternative that I never use is the equalizer setting - you can add this to the list and sort by it also

 

[Anonymous]

JohnDuncan:And an alternative that I never use is the equalizer setting - you can add this to the list and sort by it also

That is actually quite clever, I don't think anyone uses the equalizer. Well done JD - though I'll be sticking to my Applescript.ÿ

 

[John Duncan]

Yeah I have a Mac so so can I, but am like a dog with a bone.

So to speak.