Every time I open iTunes, there are about 20 of my songs that have a little black dot by them and say "unable to locate file" when I try to play them. There seems to be no rhyme or reason behind which songs this happens to. For each song, I have to right click, open the folder, and locate the song before it lets me play it. After I spend 45 minutes doing this for each song, I think the problem is solved...but then it happens again with a whole new group of songs next time I open iTunes and/or plug in my iPod. -Is there a way to keep this from happening? -Why is this happening? -Is there a way to locate the "missing" songs besides doing them one at a time? They're all in the same folder.
I've been having these same issues recently, too. Just about every album/song I click on gives me the "missing files" crap.
This morning, I moved some into a different folder. Then I opened iTunes and had this problem. It happened with the songs I moved as well as some that I didn't move. I did the little 'right click-locate file' thing for each song. Then I plugged in my iPod, uploaded some songs, and when I unplugged it, there was a whole new batch of songs with this problem. This happens whether I move files around or not, it seems.
Don't want to derail the original question, but I have another one. If I eventually add more songs to my mp3 folder (not through the iTunes store) how can I get iTunes to reread the directory? I guess this overlaps the original question after all. I usually do the dirty workaround of removing the directory in iTunes preferences, and then adding it on again so iTunes will do reread it.
Yup, same here. I don't know a way to get around it either. I've had to individually open thousands of my songs after rearranging the folders. It sucks like nothing else.
Yea, if I don't have my external hard drive plugged in, I'll get the exclamation points/can't locate the song thing when I bring up iTunes. However, I don't get that if I have my external hard drive plugged in. Maybe, ima, you need to re-install iTunes on your machine - I don't know.
There's a little black dot on my itunes today It's not the same old dot as yesterday There's a white black man called the King of Pop I keep finding the files but the problem won't stop I have had this crap before on Purple Rain With my earbuds in I can soothe my brain And nobody knows that it is Shania Twain But it's my destiny to be the king of pain...
Well, at least I know it's not just me. It's really a pain having to do this for every song one at a time. All my songs are in 1 folder (now). I wonder if there's a way to do them all at once. Another question....when I plug my iPod in, will it automatically delete the songs with the !'s? If it doesn't, then I won't bother locating all these songs since I don't listen to music on my computer anyway. If they stay on my iPod regardless, I don't care.
If you're manually rearranging thousands of songs then you must be a be a sado-masochist. Just delete the library and readd your folders. It'll go through the whole process again.
Same thing happens to me. It happened with files that I moved. I've had to reload them into the library. Is there a way for me to change it so that I-Tunes defaults to reading the new location of the songs?
There IS a way that you can tell iTunes to find all your files and open them...not sure how to do it...but they open as doubles so you have to go back and delete all the exclamation point ones.
preferences>advanced>iTunes Music folder location>Change also make sure the two boxes below are checked
Yes, I found out the hard way that if you don't check a box that says "automatically update songs and playlists" (or something like this) when you are updating your iPod, it will delete all songs with "!" by them off your iPod.
OK, I did that. Now I have a whole new batch of about 15 more '!' songs. Hopefully, this won't happen anymore after I 'locate' this new batch? I moved all my songs into the same folder because it makes it easier to locate them when I inevidably get 30 '!' songs upon opening iTunes.
how are you loading them into itunes? are you doing it a different way each time? when i import a new album it automatically goes into the ONE, SINGLE, LINKED, FOLDER called: iTunes Music.
