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iTunes seems to have lost connection to my files

I run iTunes on a Win10 PC at level 12.12.2.2. I have over 50K songs and am connected to Apple Music. Everything was working fine yesterday, but this morning iTunes was not active (auto update over night?) and when I started it up ALL of my songs now show a downwards cloud arrow beside them - indicating I should download them from the cloud. BUT all of my songs are in my iTunes folders where there were yesteday. And if I do a download it creates a duplicate file in the folder where the file already exists. I don't want to create (and the clean up) 50K duplicate files. I tried to find a previous iTunes Library (itl) file but the most recent had a 2014 date. I don't really understand the itl files .. but my Artist/Album/Song folders are immaculate. HELP!!

Windows, Windows 10

Posted on Feb 6, 2022 9:51 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Feb 7, 2022 1:24 PM

The "missing file" issue with exclamation marks 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, one of its parent folders, or the drive it lives on has had a change of drive letter, or you've moved a non-portable library to a different path (see Make a split library portable for details). 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, or that you've been too aggressive when deleting duplicates. See Getting iTunes & Windows Media Player to play nicely if you're trying to access your media with any other media players.


Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to Get Info, then click No when asked to try to locate the track. Look on the file 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, a folder renamed, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions. If the difference between the two paths is an additional Music folder in one path then this is a layout issue. I can explain further if that is the case. If everything is where it is supposed to be try Repair security permissions for iTunes for Windows.


In some cases iTunes may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps with Get Info, or when playing a track, but this time click Locate and browse to the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links. Although it says something like "use the same location" I think it expects to find the tracks in the same artist & album layout they were in previously, with one systematic change to the path.


If another application like Windows Media Player has moved/renamed the files, or the library has been moved from OS X to Windows, then the chances are that subtle differences in naming strategies will make it hard to restore the media to the precise path that iTunes is expecting. In such cases, as long as the missing files can be found somewhere, you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes. See this post for an explanation of how it works. It might need some tweaking if your media is in a non-standard layout.


If you want me to try to provide specific advice please post back the following details:

  1. The location of the media folder under Edit > Preferences > Advanced
  2. The location of a sample missing track shown under Get Info > File > Location that begins file://localhost/
  3. The true path to the file whose details you gave in 2


Note the addition of file://localhost/ (and the flipped direction of slashes in Windows) is normal for a file that isn't quite where iTunes is expecting to find it.


tt2

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6 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Feb 7, 2022 1:24 PM in response to Garth Issett - Canada

The "missing file" issue with exclamation marks 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, one of its parent folders, or the drive it lives on has had a change of drive letter, or you've moved a non-portable library to a different path (see Make a split library portable for details). 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, or that you've been too aggressive when deleting duplicates. See Getting iTunes & Windows Media Player to play nicely if you're trying to access your media with any other media players.


Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to Get Info, then click No when asked to try to locate the track. Look on the file 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, a folder renamed, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions. If the difference between the two paths is an additional Music folder in one path then this is a layout issue. I can explain further if that is the case. If everything is where it is supposed to be try Repair security permissions for iTunes for Windows.


In some cases iTunes may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps with Get Info, or when playing a track, but this time click Locate and browse to the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links. Although it says something like "use the same location" I think it expects to find the tracks in the same artist & album layout they were in previously, with one systematic change to the path.


If another application like Windows Media Player has moved/renamed the files, or the library has been moved from OS X to Windows, then the chances are that subtle differences in naming strategies will make it hard to restore the media to the precise path that iTunes is expecting. In such cases, as long as the missing files can be found somewhere, you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes. See this post for an explanation of how it works. It might need some tweaking if your media is in a non-standard layout.


If you want me to try to provide specific advice please post back the following details:

  1. The location of the media folder under Edit > Preferences > Advanced
  2. The location of a sample missing track shown under Get Info > File > Location that begins file://localhost/
  3. The true path to the file whose details you gave in 2


Note the addition of file://localhost/ (and the flipped direction of slashes in Windows) is normal for a file that isn't quite where iTunes is expecting to find it.


tt2

Feb 7, 2022 7:04 PM in response to Garth Issett - Canada

Apologies, I recall seeing the note about cloud links but for some reason picked the wrong solution from my arsenal. See Empty/corrupt iTunes library after upgrade/crash - Apple Community instead. If you have Apple Music or iTunes Match then you can reimport your local media (apart from the content that comes from the Apple Music subscription) and it should merge together with the cloud links. Restoring a copy of the .itl file from backup, or renaming a suitable .tmp file would still be more effective, if it can be done.


tt2

Feb 7, 2022 6:29 PM in response to turingtest2

Tt2, thanks so much for the thorough response. Unfortunately my issue is NOT with exclamation marks. I’ve had those before and solved that problem in ways like you suggest.


My issue is that MY WHOLE iTunes song list now has the CLOUD with the downward arrow beside every song. Which is supposed to mean ‘we have the song in Apple Music, but it is not on your PC .. so you should download it.’ … BUT .. the songs are all on the PC .. in the same library where they’ve always been.


There has been NO recent OS upgrades or changes .. and I’m always very current on iTunes release levels.


In Edit Preferences Advanced it has the correct location of my music library (so my answer 1 below for specific location)


It’s so ironic, because the VAST MAJORITY of my music is loaded into iTunes FIRST .. and then sync’ed up to Apple Music. To have Apple Music telling me now that the songs that were loaded up to it are no longer on my PC is very weird.


Hopefully this explains things a little clearer.


To answer your specific questions;


  1. C:\Users\Garth\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media
  2. the tracks aren’t really missing … for example: C:\Users\Garth\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music\Alice Cooper\Killer\Under My Wheels has the song there. But when in iTunes and I right click and select Song Info .. and then File … it shows only the iCloud info … iCloud status: Uploaded … location: iCloud. Hence the cloud with the downward arrow beside the song on my iTunes main page.
  3. the true path is the same path as 2 above .. but for some reason the Apple Music/iTunes doesn’t know its there.


Here’s something interesting that I didn’t get really specific about in my initial post .. If I click on the Cloud/downward arrow icon beside a song name …. It puts a copy of the song into the same folder where the song already exists … just adding a ‘1’ to the end. So iTunes is finding the right location .. but it’s like it’s got amnesia about my existing Library.


I really do appreciate your guidance as you sound to have deep knowledge on iTunes.

Thanks

Garth

iTunes seems to have lost connection to my files

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