I have all of my iTunes music the way that I want it as shown when I open iTunes. BUT for some reason when I copied my music via external HD to a new computer I have all of the duplicates and songs, podcasts, etc that I have deleted and do not want anymore. This is most likely because I may have hit let iTunes organize my music and then clicked "keep files" for when I delete things. So when I copied the iTunes folder from one computer it shows all of these things. I was wondering if there was a way to take the iTunes that I SEE and have that be my complete library. Ive tinkered and I don't want to loose everything without a definitive answer. Thanks!
It's something of a long process, but the easiest way to deal with cruft: Go into prefs and set the music folder somewhere else File>Library>Consolidate Library (this will take a long time depending on how big your library is) Ensure that all of your files are in the new music folder specified in step 1; if so: Delete the old music folder, which will wipe out any of the old junk you no longer need Go back into prefs and set the music folder back where it was Re-consolidate the library, and if necessary delete that giant temporary holding folder Consolidate basically copies everything that's visible in your iTunes library to the folder specified in the app preferences. So you'll move everything, delete the old stuff (including dupes), then move it back. Don't just copy+paste in Explorer/Finder or else you'll break all of the reference locations in the iTunes library.
Well when I set the music folder somewhere I get a status bar that is "Updating iTunes Library." Do I want it to do this? I hit stop and hit consolidate library and I got "!" next to all of the songs and I have to go through and find all of the music one by one again.
Yeah, consolidating takes a LONG time - my library would take several hours each time (it's over 300GB thanks to some HD movies and TV). It's basically a giant copy-and-paste, so the more content you have the longer it will take. Just give it time
i don't like how iTunes class podcast and movies are music. i keep my music in the data partition, while podcasts are kept in a temporary partition so fragmentation isn't a problem on my data partition. but after doing the consolidating, everything is meshed into one "music" folder. how do i keep all the podcasts and move the podcast back to where it used to be? EDIT: nevermind. moved the iTunes music folder back, and then cut/paste the Podcasts folder back solved the problem.