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Locate multiple missing files

Hi,

About half of all my collected music is showing up as not found in iTunes.

The location of my music files are in C:/users/<user>/Music/Music/


And for the missing files in the iTunes summary page it says the location is in

file://localhost/C:/Users/<user>/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/<artist>/<album>/<song>.mp3


I've gone to Edit > Preferences > Advanced and changed the iTunes media folder location to C:/users/<user>/Music/Music/ where my music is located, but around half of my songs cannot be located by iTunes when it prompts me to scan for multiple missing files.


There appears to be no difference between having the option "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" checked or not, and frankly I'm quite stumped trying to figure this out.


If somebody could explain how the iTunes file structure works/how I can solve this it would be greatly appreciated.

Windows, Windows 10

Posted on Mar 19, 2022 10:19 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Mar 20, 2022 3:52 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

Mar 20, 2022 3:52 PM in response to sterling8302

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

Mar 20, 2022 9:41 AM in response to sterling8302

Hey sterling8302,


It sounds like at some point, the location of where new and imported files for iTunes are stored on your PC. When this occurs, the new files items will be stored in that location but songs that have already been imported stay in their current location. You can read more on this here:


Change where iTunes files are stored on PC


What you could do is remove the songs from iTunes and then import them once more. They should all be in the same location after doing this. 


We hope this helps. Take care.

Mar 24, 2022 2:38 PM in response to turingtest2

I think it's the layout issue situation, all of my music is stored in "C:\users\<user>\Music\Music"

But iTunes can't seem to locate the missing files even when I set the directory there and it asks me if I want to use that location to search for other missing files.


I find it strange because it used to work fine before, and I don't remember changing settings that could have made iTunes not find half of my music. For whatever reason it's the oldest half of my music that iTunes can't locate.

Mar 24, 2022 4:50 PM in response to sterling8302

The default location of the media folder is iTunes Media in the same folder as the .itl file. From the look of things yours might have been set to your main Music folder at some point and has since been reset. That said the path in 3) is non standard. From the look of things you have a flat structure in the form <Artist> - <Name>.<Ext> which iTunes is going to struggle with. My FindTracks script does have a mechanism for detecting tracks in this layout so it might be worth a shot. The other approach with an unusual layout would be to add your media into the Automatically Add to iTunes folder so iTunes can import it to its own layout and then use my DeDuper script to clean up duplicates while preserving playlist membership, ratings, play counts, etc.


tt2

Locate multiple missing files

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