Searching for missing songs with exclamation marks in iTunes on Windows 11

The_Thing_At_Rawlinson_End wrote:

The thread seems to have died unresolved,

Here's my pennies-worth:

It looks to me (from your screenshots) that you have created a Playlist Folder named Found, which is not correct. You need to create a Regular Playlist, which you will then name as Found. Ensure that you understand each step below and carry that step out, exactly as written. If a step does not do as expected, look carefully at what you are being asked to do and ensure that you have done it correctly.

If you have a lot of Playlists, when you create another one, it can be difficult to locate. So to make it easier to find the new one that you create, we'll put it and the second one into that folder you've already created, the one currently named Found. We will also rename that Playlist Folder, to avoid confusion.

• tap the Playlist Folder, named Found, so that it is selected. It will be highlighted in light grey
• tap the name of the folder (the text Found) again and it should highlight in blue. (You can tap it in the left sidebar or on the main panel that shows the content of that folder. That allows you to overtype the name with the new name, which I suggest you call Missing):

• ensure that you have selected the folder Missing
• using iTunes' top bar menu, select File/New/Playlist:

That creates a new empty playlist. It will be in the Missing folder. :

• note that the right hand side still shows the folder, even though you have the playlist selected
• again, while the text is highlighted in blue, type in the name for this Playlist; Found. If the highlight closes, simply tap the Playlist name again to highlight it. Your screen will now look like the one shown below (without my orange text of course):

• notice the arrangement of the playlists; the regular Playlist Found is indented within the Playlist Folder MIssing
• also note the different icons for these objects.
• now go to the step turingtest2 suggested; to select all the songs in your library and drag them to the Found Playlist. Note that you cannot add songs to a Playlist Folder
• if your music library is large, you may need to add it in smaller chunks. My library cannot do it in one step. Try adding one or two genres at a time

That's the first part completed. Now to create the second, Smart Playlist:

• ensure that the Missing Playlist folder is selected
• on iTunes' top bar menu, select File/New/Smart Playlist. It will open the Rules panel for a Smart Playlist

• change the rules to match the ones suggested by turingtest2 (here's mine, which looks exactly the same as turingtest2's one:

Again, to rename the new Smart Playlist as Lost, highlight it, tap the name a second time and overtype the blue text

The Lost Playlist will populate from the Found one.

This is a method to reveal all missing tracks, although it may be awkward to use with really large libraries.

Lost & Found Playlists

Create a playlist called Found, select everything in the Songs view (Ctrl+A) and drag it into the Found playlist. (N.b. Before you drop the icon should change to include a count of the selected tracks.) Create a smart playlist called Lost with the rule Playlist is not Found and matching with Music items. Your lost tracks will be in this playlist.

Should you or anyone else want to know how to repair the broken tracks, assuming the files still exist, then see this post iTunes Original File Could Not Be Found - Apple Community. I have a script that can potentially relink the missing files as long as they are still present somewhere.

tt2

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

In theory, providing that the filepath and filename remains exactly the same, then when you re-start the computer (and therefore re-start iTunes) it may find all the missing tracks.

If they are not found automatically, when you try playing a "missing" track, it will no longer be missing and so the exclamation mark should be removed and the track will play. Obviously, playing the entire track will not be necessary, so once iTunes has found the first one, just move forward to the next missing one. That's much quicker than using the "locate file" option.

Plus, ITunes should ask whether you wish for it to attempt to locate the remaining missing tracks. It's sometime since I've had to use that option, but if I remember correctly, once it has located a track it will look for the remainder in the same location. This method may only find the missing tracks in the same end folder (i.e. the album folder), rather than everything in the same path, but if that shortens the time it takes to find everything, it may help.

One final point: each external drive must have the same drive letter that it had when you added the files to your library. So if your G: drive become the H: drive, iTunes will not find the files on the E: drive.

By the way, your Playlists arrangement will now look like (or every similar to) the screenshot below:

Notice the:

• "folder" icon for the playlist folder named Missing
• "gear" (or "cogwheel") icon for the Lost smart playlist, as well as the Edit Rules text to the right of the playlist name in the main panel
• musical note and music paper icon for the regular playlist named Found

The_Thing_At_Rawlinson_End wrote:

...

Question, how do I transfer files in the Lost Folder to the Found folder and from there hopefully it will be straight drag and drop into the iPod.

At any point you can select everything in Lost (Ctrl+A) and attempt to drag it to Found. All the fixed tracks will be removed from Lost.

Did you try using my script to make repairs? Or moving things to where they should be? Generally won't link a lost .wav to an .mp3 instead.

If you've got stuff spread across multiple drives then you should really consolidate the library to one drive large enough to hold everything. Ideally the library would be at something like X:\iTunes and the media folder at X:\iTunes\iTunes Media. That way the library stays functional even if the drive letter changes.

tt2

... Generally a good move to have the advanced preference Copy files... turned on. Keep organized... too, unless like me you really want full manual control over file and folder names and are prepared for the extra effort involved.

tt2