The trick is to import your modified library. In fact Apple tells you how to do this already : http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1451

Even if you manage your own library in terms of where the files are stored you can still reimport your edited .xml file.

I had a problem because I had added tracks to the library on one computer which mapped my NAS to J: and trying to find them on another computer which mapped my NAS to M:. The library had most of my files on the J: path so I had to do a global search and replace of J: to M:.

I realised afterwards that I could have just removed all the songs from my library and reimported the modified .xml rather than trashing the .itl but that’s what the Apple help said to do as well so I didn’t think it through.

I had the same problem and was searching around for solution when it occured to me that there’s an option to export the library.

If you can export the library then you should be able to import it too. And you can. Here’s how: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1451

You do the same as described above but first make a copy of the .xml file and rename it something new – I called mine m drive iTunes Library.xml as I was moving to the M: drive. Afte trashing the itl file itunes starts from scratch so when you start it up it creates a new .itl and a fresh .xml. Next select import playlist (it’s not just for playlists!) and select the renamed xml libarary file. It will take a while but eventually your library will be restored and in the same new location too.

It’s Apple approved! http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1451

I have the same problem.

Speak up if anyone else does. I’ll let you know if I solve it. I am going to try installing an earlier version on ITunes9 and then if it works, upgrading then

Steve

BUT EVEN BETTER…:
it moved my iPhone partnership too. This meant I could keep ALL the data on the iPhone and now sync with my new Mac. GREAT! Please, share this in your article, I think it will make a lot of iPhone owners happy!

Thank you again!

I have a dedicated F: drive for mp3’s and iTunes libraries I use. The trick I use is not to “move” it but to redirect where windows “looks” for the data or mp3’s in this case. After running the proper command the data will be accessible from both locations as if there were actually there. That means a change in either places affects the file directly as each file technically only exists in once place.

Google ‘junction’ from sysinternals and download it. Extract it and from that directory open a command line.

Command I used to get the default iTunes folder to point to “F:iTunes db” is:

junction “C:Documents and SettingsMarioMy DocumentsMy MusiciTunes” “F:itunes_database”

Make sure you use quotes if any spaces are in the paths.

Using this method, you cam move your root mp3 directory wherever you want without doing anything in iTunes.

I lost all my music because the iTunes managed library on a secondary HDD was lost due to HDD failure. Everything was on there! Luckily, my music was backed up on my iPod and my .itl was undamaged on my main drive! After purchasing a new HDD and creating a new music folder:

Step 1: Copy my music back from the iPod.
I hesitate here because I wonder of things would have been different had i not used iTunes without my music and more importantly the file structure being there. I digress, needless to say:

Step 2: Point iTunes to the new music folder with all the music in it.
At first glance it worked! exclamation points gone, highly rated playlist filling up! This is a playlist containing 4-5 star rated songs, thus proving the ratings are intact.

Weird problem occurring: some of the songs in the rated list have exclamation’s!?

I can’t imagine why so i look closer and find close to 30% of my library is pointing to the wrong folder! (users/itunes/itunes music).

WTF?

The only solution seems to manually point each song to the new location… but it’s a nightmare because there seem to be about 2024 songs with bad location strings.

I find this site and immediately close itunes and open the 10,573k library.xml file to perform a find & replace. For those who are unfamiliar with find and replace it is basically tool that Word and many other programs have that finds an exact phrase you type and replaces it with one you want. eg:find their and replace with there it will find all the their in your large document and replace it with there the trick is sometimes you want there and other times you want their. This caused another problem which I explain below.

Word (from Office 07 on vista 64) cannot open a file this large or the .xml (lawsuit fallout? haha j/k)

anyway, notepad opens the 10.5mb file with ease so I cut and paste it into an open word .docx for the find & replace function.

I run the find for:
Locationfile://localhost/C:/Users/*mycomp/Music/iTunes/iTunes%20Music/*

and replace with:

Locationfile://localhost/W:/Music/

Then I fix the .itl file then save and close it.

Opened itunes and it rebuilt my library and it worked fine!

But i noticed some songs missing now, less songs than before but they weren’t even in the library anymore.Some songs are gone from the library alltogether, I check the xml and it has dropped by 30%, my lib.xml file is only 7.5mb now

First I tried the process over again from a backup i created of the untouched lib file, hoping I made a mistake. I got the same result.

I did confirm that out of roughly 6200 songs, the ‘find and replace’ made 2024 corrections and further went to check that some of the files were fine that originally had a bad location string. Here is where I found something interesting:

some of the original library files were pointing to C:/Users/mycomp/Music/iTunes/iTunes%20Music/ and of course it was changed to W:/Music/ however some of them, specifically songs that were a part of compilations were pointing to W:/Music/compilations/alubum as opposed to the fixed files which were W:/Music/artist/Album

So that’s it: the problem was that the iPod’s file structure was apparently different than iTunes Library file structure when referring to compilations.

unfortunately there is no find and replace with a variable which is determined by each song (record/ key). Not in word anyway, so i am currently working on a short script which will find the word ‘compilations’ and replace with the ‘artist name’ based on the record in which it finds it. (im sure there is a better way to describe this, sorry).

Astonashingly, the folder compilations is in the iPod, but there are only 3 songs in three respective folders yet i have thousands of songs in compilations based on what the lib.xml points to.

At any rate, keep backups!

e.g. file://localhost/S:/MP3%20Albums%20-%20Main%20Library/

I’m about to do this migration from one laptop to another running Windows XP and ITunes Vers 7.6.1.9.

I think I’m nearly ready but I’m a bit nervous about editing the .xml file, mainly because when I open it all the “” I expected to see in the path are represented as ”/”, which means that the screenshot for the global search and replace won’t work. Any ideas on this? I’ve read that I do need to include ”%20” as spaces too.

All help greatly appreciated. Steve.

That sounds very interesting indeed; if someone could come up with such a script it would be a tremendous help to all those iTunes users facing this problem.

FWIW, I have written some perl scripts in the past using the iTunes COM API, so I was thinking I’d do the same thing here. Alas, there is no way to modify Location() (the path to the file) via the API (nor can you modify DateAdded()). Still, most of the fields can be modified, so if someone were so inclined they could write a script to automate some or all of this process – i.e. save all the metadata, remove and replace all the tracks, and update the new tracks with the old metadata (with matching based on trailing pathnames). I have a script that syncs iTunes/WMP metadata in a similar way that could probably be adapted to the task. Not sure if this would be any better than the method above, although it could probably avoid the podcast and column layout issues.

Of course I’m missing all of my playlists and my track ratings. What’s the best way to remedy this? ( Windows 7, itunes 9)

Many Thanks!

copy your music folders from under the itunes music library to wherever you want them—> open iTunes and delete all albums that you want to move (answer yes to moving them to recycle bin)—> then add the albums from the preferred location back to iTunes via “File, Add Folder to library…”

Done.

Thanks!

Just to point out that I transfered my itunes library from pc to mac using this procedure and it worked perfectly.

I almost bougth one of those softwares to transfert the ipod to my hackintosh pro, but I remembered that before formatting the pc I saved these 2 files wondering that they migth be useful to recover somthing.
Well, it was essential.

thanks a lot!!!!!!!!!!!
Cheers

C:\>xcopy /E /Y /K “C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\*” ”\NAS-DEVICE\Public\Our Music”

The /K keeps the original file attributes. The /Y is basically answering yes to the 6000 prompts during the copy, the /E creates the recursive directory structure. Please note that the quotes are necessary due to the spaces in the file names. Just completed the switch-over and all my album info was intact
Cheers!

Very usefull site, thanks for the great work.

I’ve a sligtly diffrent problem, relate to this. Appologizes if already answered, I tried to read it all, but I might have missed one.

For three days, CD imports go on the local HD (... My Music …), rather to the defined library, defined on my NAS in Preferences. Does anyone knows how I can modify the destination ?

Detailed history :
I put my Music on a NAS, starting from a blank lib, just stating the position of the lib in the preferences. Did it with desktop home computer. It worked fine, and I was glad to put my 600th album (all lossless) before going to hollidays. I took the NAS with me. I came back, and made a little mistake when connecting back, because I statred iTune, the NAS not beeing ready. After starting the NAS, it worked all fine to play music (with files from the NAS), but each time I add a new record in the lib, it goes on the locac CD. And when i Select it and make consolidate, its jumps to the NAS !

Thanks for your help

Fedj

Its worse when you just want to move a couple of directories around, e.g I have a pending folder full of music that I would like to sort into appropriate locations.

Why is this so hard, why does Apple insist on making this so hard in Windows?

Here is another one, say a file has been deleted from the disk and you get the little i meaning ITunes can’t find it, tell me how do you find out what the file path is? You can’t there is no “file path” column or property?? WHY WHY WHY, I am a developer and I cannot understand the mentality of the Apple team, it must be a Mac thing.

Yuk.