[X4U] consolidating iTunes library

[Michael W. Sumbera]

On Mar 3, 2005, at 4:31 AM, Stroller wrote:

>
> On Mar 3, 2005, at 1:12 am, Kevin Lee Allen wrote:
>>
>> When I consolidate, I see a small grey circle with an exclamation 
>> point icon in the left column of iTunes for songs on another drive. I 
>> can individually locate these and copy, but I hope there is a way to 
>> do a mass import.
>
> As Kirk pointed out, that means iTunes can't find the file. I used to 
> get this a lot when my files were on an SMB share & when I organised 
> them myself - if the MP3 share was mounted then perhaps I'd moved the 
> song into another folder whilst tidying.
>
> I'd advise finding all the songs with a grey circle in your music 
> library & deleting them. Then ensure in iTunes preferences that "Keep 
> iTunes folder organised" is checked and also that "Copy files to 
> iTunes Music folder is also checked". Finally find the MP3 files & 
> drag & drop the lot of them into iTunes.

But this just the sort of the thing that the "Consolidate iTunes 
Library" function is for.  The way it is supposed to work (and has for 
me in the past) is that it takes items in the iTunes library, i.e. 
master playlist,  (assuming it can find them so second hard drives or 
network volumes have to be mounted) that are not in your iTunes Music 
folder (check preferences for where that is), copies the file to that 
folder and resets iTunes location for that file.  Ideally after doing 
this, then you shouldn't need those additional volumes except as 
back-ups.  Of course, you need to be sure there's enough room on the 
drive with your iTunes Music Library to hold all the files.