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jessicapp

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 11, 2012
4
0
How do i find and delete duplicate songs in iTunes? I found the "show exact duplicate items" under the View drop down, but it is greyed out and I cannot click on it? Anyone can help me?
Thank you so much.
 

justperry

macrumors G5
Aug 10, 2007
12,553
9,745
I'm a rolling stone.
What if you don't have any duplicate songs, this might be the problem, even before you hit that Menu iTunes knows if there are duplicates, if there are none I guess it's greyed out.
Oh, and in mine it says "Show Duplicate Songs", not "Show Exact Duplicate Items".
 

bobsax

macrumors regular
Apr 22, 2008
106
2
what version do you have?
Also if you press the option key while highlighting the show duplicates it gives you "Show exact Duplicates"
 

Shivetya

macrumors 68000
Jan 16, 2008
1,669
306
Let me get a question in on this thread...

I have a large number which list as exact duplicates, is there any easy way on the Mac to automatically process the list? I found a vbs script but alas I am not on Windows.... or is that hot damn I am not on Windows?
 

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,541
942
You may want to check out Dupin from Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes, which is a great resource for managing your iTunes tags and files.

However, there are reasons why you may want to keep some duplicates. iTunes considers items duplicates if the song name and artist fields match. They may be from different albums, have different lengths or bitrates, be different file types, be live or studio versions, etc. There is no software that can make all those determinations for you. The safest method of dupe deletion is manual. With any other method, you run the risk of deleting something you didn't intend to delete.
 

bobsax

macrumors regular
Apr 22, 2008
106
2
length

After getting the list of exact duplicates, I put them in order of song length then look for the duplicates. If they're the exact length they're probably the same recording.

If you have room keep the ones that are on different albums or compilations. (to keep the albums complete)
 

gnasher729

Suspended
Nov 25, 2005
17,980
5,565
You may want to check out Dupin from Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes, which is a great resource for managing your iTunes tags and files.

However, there are reasons why you may want to keep some duplicates. iTunes considers items duplicates if the song name and artist fields match. They may be from different albums, have different lengths or bitrates, be different file types, be live or studio versions, etc. There is no software that can make all those determinations for you. The safest method of dupe deletion is manual. With any other method, you run the risk of deleting something you didn't intend to delete.

That, and you don't want to make albums incomplete. There are cases where a duet of two singers is on albums of both singers, so deleting one song means you have one incomplete album. Or you have an album of an artist, and a "best of" album, you would want them both complete.
 

bobsax

macrumors regular
Apr 22, 2008
106
2
That, and you don't want to make albums incomplete. There are cases where a duet of two singers is on albums of both singers, so deleting one song means you have one incomplete album. Or you have an album of an artist, and a "best of" album, you would want them both complete.
Agreed , usually the eq and and sometimes the mix is different.
I have a bunch of ABBA compilations and I was thinking of deleting the duplicates but after listening to quite a few I noticed big differences in E.Q. and mix on most tunes.

I went to my laptop and removed (hide in the cloud) a play-along music book with 150 tracks.
I still have it on my desktop but it's no longer in the cloud.
 

bob bubbles

macrumors newbie
May 30, 2013
4
0
I haven't read this whole thread so apologies if this has already been said. If you want to solve this problem of duplicates in iTunes, don't bother downloading all these rubbish programmes that promise to fix it for you, like i did. Just un-install itunes and re-install it again. It really is that simple. Took me a stressed out couple of nights to work that one out!
 

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,541
942
I haven't read this whole thread so apologies if this has already been said. If you want to solve this problem of duplicates in iTunes, don't bother downloading all these rubbish programmes that promise to fix it for you, like i did. Just un-install itunes and re-install it again. It really is that simple. Took me a stressed out couple of nights to work that one out!

Read the thread. Uninstalling/reinstalling won't get rid of duplicates.
 

bob bubbles

macrumors newbie
May 30, 2013
4
0
Ah well, it did for me.

I'm trying to think if there was anything else that i did for this to work for me. All i can of is that i deleted EVERYTHING from my library first before reinstalling. ANyway it worked and I'm so happy about it that i registered here to mention it!
 

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,541
942
I'm trying to think if there was anything else that i did for this to work for me. All i can of is that i deleted EVERYTHING from my library first before reinstalling.

That would have done it, without uninstalling/reinstalling the app.
 
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