Itunes songs with exclamation points

The exclamation mark can mean several things, not just a missing file. What's the exact message you see when you click on the exclamation mark?

Of course the songs won't work if the iPod isn't connected. The iPod is where the files are. iTunes cannot find the file and you get an exclamation point.

What you need to do is open preferences>advanced and click copy files to iTunes music folder. That will copy the songs to your hardrive.

Ok getting rid of the exclamation marks from your library? Hmm, if you added all of those songs at the same time I'd open Edit Menu>View Options and select Date Added. Hopefully all the songs with an exclamation mark were added at the same time. This should group them all together when you view your Library by "Date Added". Then select all the songs with exclamation points and hit delete. That should do it.

This may not be related, but I had a spat of this a few weeks ago when syncing to my iPod I started getting lots of errors and lots of exclamation points for songs and videos that have been in my library and on my iPod for years. (Yes, my iTunes library still lives on the Dell, sigh).

When I looked, I found the songs and videos still where they were supposed to be. Tried to re-add them manually and considered "consolidate library", but it kept telling me that the file didn't exist even though I could see it in WIndows explorer and was able to play the file in foobar2000. I tried to exit iTunes and restart it, but it wouldn't shut down. That's when I resorted to the three finger salute.

A simple reboot took care of all the funkiness, so I suspect that something got corrupted in RAM.

B

iTunes exclamation mark problem

To remove all songs from the library that iTunes can't find the file for (a.k.a. the iTunes exclamation mark problem), you might want to try beaTunes. It has a feature made for exactly this problem.

Disclaimer: I am affiliated with the manufacturer of beaTunes.

Super Remove Dead Tracks v2.1 from Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes

Exclamation mark/point

I went onto my itunes one day and tried to play a song and a exclamation mar/point (!) came up and the song wouldnt play it asked me to locate the file now this happened to about half my music but only the stuff that i had imported off a disc not the stuff that i had downloaded. So my downloaded music is all fine but the imported music has (!) exclamation marks and won't play.I thought i would try rip it off my ipod back onto itunes but suddenly all the music and video has dissapeared off that too and i had to restore it to factory settings because itunes couldnt read it. Help?? Btw im on a pc

You did see in my post above that when this happened to me three and a half years ago it went away after verifying the files were still actually where they should be and a reboot. Right?

Have you rebooted?

B

weird stuff... never heard anything like that