[X4U] consolidating iTunes library

[Stroller]

On Mar 3, 2005, at 11:03 am, Michael W. Sumbera wrote:
>>
>> 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.

Yeah, assuming it can find them... the grey pling indicates it can't 
find them. Is it possible that iTunes is just m00dy about files on 
other volumes?

Before I recently started using iTunes properly it used to annoy me 
that every mp3 I opened added itself to my iTunes library - in fact it 
would still annoy me, but I set the default application for mp3s to be 
Quicktime. My voicemail sends me my messages as mp3, so I'd keep 
finding answerphone messages in the iTunes library. Playing these would 
show the grey pling, too, because I'd already deleted them from the 
desktop.

I'll bet if the OP wants to play these songs, the grey exclamation will 
show, too.... consolidation won't work on songs it can't find. My bet 
is the songs in question have been stored on an external drive, which 
has been plugged into another Mac when their titles have been changed - 
the other Mac will have renamed them, and now this Mac can't find them 
under that name. Either that, or the MP3 directory has been renamed to 
"music" or something like this.

Stroller.