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Eusebius

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 9, 2006
76
0
When I recently switched to mac and iTunes, I unchecked the boxes in the iTunes preferences that would allow iTunes to manage folders and add files into the iTunes folder, because I wanted to keep my files and folders organized as I have long had them. Then I added all my folders to the iTunes library. So far so good. The problem: Much of this music is classical, where it is vital that it be played in a certain order. (Movements of a symphony or choral works, for example) To preserve that order, all my individual mp3 files are numbered: 01...02...03 etc. Despite this, iTunes lists files in a seemingly random order, and no matter whether I click on the title, or album or artist column, I can't get iTunes to list files in the order in which they are numbered in their file names. What to do? How to get iTunes to respect the numbering of my files?
 
Um, tag your files correctly? iTunes operates with tags, not filenames. So, tag your stuff. If it's not tagged well, shame on you. Pretty simple, really.
 
This is how to do as killmoms suggests:

Sort your music so that all the selections on an album are together
Select a track and press Apple-I ( or File > Get Info)
Fill in Track # of #

This is tedious, and there may be a faster way to do it, but you are doing it because the way you had to do it in the past was stupid. I am not saying that you are stupid, merely that you were forced to use stupid tools.
 
Yes all my files are tagged -- title, artist, album and genre...but not track number. I can't make out how iTunes determines the order in which it lists them -- certainly not by file names! Please don't tell me that I shall have to retag all 3000 files! Is there another program for os X that would respect my file numberings? My portable mp3 player does, for example. So why can't iTunes?
 
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