How to index/delete alias files?

[thecovetrix]

My husband must have imported his music library half a dozen times to iTunes over the years, leaving up to six copies of each song.

I used dupeGuru ME to delete the extra copies, but inadvertently created an alias file for each one - which makes Sonos think that the music library is many times larger than it actually is, making a smooth upload impossible.

My question: How do I now delete the alias files? dupeGuru now ignores them when searching for dupes (recognizing them as alias files). For some reason, they are also not listed when searching for File Kind: Alias.

Thanks for any advice!

 

[robgendreau]

I navigated to a the folder where I keep my music, and just did a search on the word "alias" and was able to find them. Not kind, just the word. You didn't mention whether iTunes copied these to its own library, or whether you reference those files. That makes a difference in where you find them.

You might also try a utility like HoudahSpot; better for Spotlight searches than Spotlight IMHO and you can do more stuff. Or Find Any File, which doesn't rely on Spotlight indexes to find stuff.

 

[thecovetrix]

Thanks! I wasn't able to make your first fix work, but I downloaded HoudahSpot and Find Any File. The latter seemed like it would work, but kept crashing when I tried to delete all of the alias files through it. I ended up using iFileX, which is apparently based on FAF. It took a while, but I was able to delete every last alias file!

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

...Find Any File. The latter seemed like it would work, but kept crashing when I tried to delete all of the alias files through it...

Did you report the problem (via tempel.org)?