[williamus]

Sorry if this has been dealt with before but I couldn't find anything.

I "tidied up" my music folders on my PC and now itunes "can't find" the files cos I've moved or renamed them them. I've got iTunes set to manually manage the transfer of files from PC to iPhone but I can't play anything on iTunes on my PC without ploughing through my music folders to locate it. This is a real pain and if I sync the iPhone I assume it'll lose all files on the iPhone. Everything is fine on the iPhone for now. Even Vista isn't this clumsy. Any ideas Guys?

[Butters]

Originally Posted by williamus

Sorry if this has been dealt with before but I couldn't find anything.

I "tidied up" my music folders on my PC and now itunes "can't find" the files cos I've moved or renamed them them. I've got iTunes set to manually manage the transfer of files from PC to iPhone but I can't play anything on iTunes on my PC without ploughing through my music folders to locate it. This is a real pain and if I sync the iPhone I assume it'll lose all files on the iPhone. Everything is fine on the iPhone for now. Even Vista isn't this clumsy. Any ideas Guys?

I presume all your music files are in the same location under the same high level folder structure??

I hate iTunes personally but have to use it due to my iPhone, but i had a similar situation and found the quickest route that i could understand was re-create the library again.

1. So press and hold the shift key and double click the iTunes icon on desktop to start iTunes (takes more time than you would expect so keep that shift button pressed)
   
2. iTunes will now ask you to select a library or create a new one
   
3. Create a new one
   
4. Set it up to point at where all your files are now residing

There are no doubt other options, but this worked for me.

[williamus]

Butters

Thanks for the tip and I'll use it if plan A fails. Thinking about it today I realised that as I do a complete file backup on an external HD every month, I should have the file heirarchy as it was before I messed about, changed the names etc. If I'm right I should just be able to put everything back the way it was complete with artwork etc... let you know how I get on.

Cheers

[BIGDENNIS10UK]

i've done this as well.

I could just put all the music back into itunes, but i will lose all my plays (info, etc), at the moment i will have to manually locate over 19000 files, if i ever want them to play in itunes again without connecting my ipod, anyone know how i can point the library to the files with having to do each one individually?

I only done a back up

[BIGDENNIS10UK]

sorry, i didn't realise this was the iphone forum, in my case i'm using a classic ipod 160 gb, if anyone can help.

[williamus]

Originally Posted by BIGDENNIS10UK

sorry, i didn't realise this was the iphone forum, in my case i'm using a classic ipod 160 gb, if anyone can help.

No probs... it's the same issue whether it's an iPod or an iPhone. I've learned to live with this but it would be nice if a new iteration of iTunes could do an intelligent search (like W7 and Vista can).

Because I manually manage my music and vids it's only a problem when I try to play something on the PC and iTunes can't locate where I've moved my files. I seem to remember that once you've told iTunes where the file is, it offers to try and locate other "lost" files for you. If you've just moved them from folder to folder or even directory to directory then this might work for you but presumably only if you haven't changed the names of the songs/vids/etc.

With manually managing your stuff it doesn't matter where it is on the PC after you've located it for iTunes, it will remember and play it from wherever it is. I rather assume that if you sync everything that's not going to be the case.