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Galley

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Mar 24, 2008
1,216
80
If for any reason you find yourself with random missing tracks, (or are trying to recover from a dying hard drive like me), there is an easy way to isolate those missing tracks.

1. Create a standard playlist called "Not Missing".
2. Drag your entire library into that playlist. Missing tracks cannot be copied to a playlist.
3. Create a smart playlist called "Missing" where Playlist - is not - Not Missing.

Voila! All your missing tracks with the dreaded exclamation mark are now in a playlist. You have three options:
1. Delete them
2. Reconnect them by manually finding the proper files.
3. Reimport your CDs, which will retain the ratings and playcounts, etc. :)
 

Arran

macrumors 601
Mar 7, 2008
4,850
3,782
Atlanta, USA
Yes, there's been a few times I've been 'weeding' my library and could have used that. Will remember for future. Thanks!
 

thegilly

macrumors member
Mar 4, 2008
73
0
Auckland, New Zealand
I use a script called "Super-Remove Dead Tracks" from http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes. It goes through and deletes all exclamation-marked tracks, then helpfully puts their details in a text file on my desktop so I can see what was deleted. This works particularly well for me because, as a rule, my missing tracks actually ARE missing--they're not on a different drive, they're gone because I've connected to my iMac from my iBook to delete 'em but haven't bothered about their entries in iTunes. Of course, this only works for Mac users while the clever playlist trick above will work for all. :)
 

RTW

macrumors newbie
Nov 23, 2008
22
0
Actually, for anyone who uses playlists, I wouldn't recommend removing missing (exclamation point) tracks... they work very well as placeholders. I assume a script like Doug's doesn't (and can't) record the playlists and playlist positions a track holds before it gets removed.

This is the biggest problem, I think, of moving tracks around in iTunes... delete one track and every playlist it's on is altered, with no record kept of what has changed.
 
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