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Transferring iTunes content to new account on same computer

annk

annk

Administrator
Original poster
Staff member
Apr 18, 2004
15,322
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Somewhere over the rainbow
I recently had to create a new account (admin) because of problems with the old one. I've now been using the new account with no problems for a few weeks, and am ready to ditch the old one completely. I've got everything organised except my iTunes content. iTunes on the new account behaves as if there's nothing there, so I can see I've got some work left to do.

I authorised iTunes on the new account for both the iTunes store (was told it already was authorised) and for my audible.com account. I changed permissions to read and write for everyone on iTunes in the old account, but that didn't help anything.

Is there a simple way to do this? Once this is transferred I want to delete the old account completely, so setting content up to share isn't the best solution for me.
 
That sounds like it makes good sense, but is the "browse to the correct location" System - library - users - the new user account - library - iTunes folder? :confused:

Edit: Figured out what I asked above here. When I navigate to the new user, the Music folder has the red "no permissions" icon, even though I see when I check Get info that all permissions for everyone are set to read and write. I did however manage to change the location (to the Music folder in the new user account - there was no iTunes folder within it, and I wasn't able to create one), but the content still didn't show up.

I won't be around for several hours now, but I'll check back late this evening. Thanks in advance for all help!
 
Are you running from the old account or the new account? It sounds like you're doing this while running the old account, in which case the best way to go about the move is to open a Terminal window and run:

sudo mv ~/Music/iTunes /Users/newaccount/Music
sudo chown -R newaccount:newaccount /Users/newaccount/Music/iTunes

Where newaccount is, of course, the home folder name of your new user account.
 
Yeah, I was doing it from the old account. I'll use your Terminal command, thanks.

I seem to remember you helped me in my thread a while ago about setting up this new account as well. :)
 
BlueRevolution said:
Are you running from the old account or the new account? It sounds like you're doing this while running the old account, in which case the best way to go about the move is to open a Terminal window and run:

sudo mv ~/Music/iTunes /Users/newaccount/Music
sudo chown -R newaccount:newaccount /Users/newaccount/Music/iTunes

Where newaccount is, of course, the home folder name of your new user account.
Click to expand...

For the first command, I get "no such file or directory", and for the second, I get "invalid argument". :(

I can see I've got some checking and cleaning up to do here. All my content is available from the old account, so I know it's there. I'll be gone from tomorrow to late Sunday, so I'll pick this problem up again on Monday and post an update. Hopefully I'll be able to post enough info from how both accounts look that you'll be able to see where I'm messing this up. :eek:
 
I'm using the account name as it appears next to the home folder icon, and no, there are no spaces.

Monday I will post screen shots of what the two accounts/relevant folders look like in Finder in each case.

Someone I know told me that the use of the user name twice in the command with the colon between has to do with groups (which I don't know exactly what are). He suggested that if commands of this type return an error message, I can try to drop the repeated user name (but to keep the colon). Does that make any sense?
 
annk said:
Someone I know told me that the use of the user name twice in the command with the colon between has to do with groups (which I don't know exactly what are). He suggested that if commands of this type return an error message, I can try to drop the repeated user name (but to keep the colon). Does that make any sense?
Click to expand...

The concept of groups is a bit peripheral to the subject at hand, although you can read up on them if you're interested. In any case, suffice it to say that every user account on Mac OS X has a group with the same name, and all files inside their home folder should be owned by both the user and the corresponding group. The username:username syntax changes both of those at once.

chmod username: file

doesn't make any sense, but these would work:

chmod username file
chmod :groupname file

I don't know what the benefit would be of separating the commands like that, though, at least in your case.
 
Ok thanks, and I do want to read more on it and will so thank you for the link. :)

Am on my way to the airport with problem still unsolved but will be back to tackle it Monday.
 
Real life got in the way for a while, but I'm back now and still trying to figure this out.

Status: I can access my music, TV shows, and audiobooks via Time Machine Backups, so I'll just import them that way. I still can't get the permissions to work, so that my new account (admin account) can access media from my old account (also an admin account). This is despite the fact that I've done what you've told me to do, and gone through absolutely everything in both accounts manually and fixed the permissions so that "everybody" has read and write permissions.

The last problem is how to access my iPhoto library from my new account. I can log into the old account (painfully slow, at least 20 seconds of beachballing every time I click on anything :() and view the photos there, but I can't get them over to the new account. I've fixed permissions manually, I've tried to copy them over to a new HD and then move them to my pictures folder in my new account. Nothing works.

Is there any information I can give that might help? I just want to give my new account permissions to absolutely everything on my computer.
 
I finally gave up on trying to fix permissions. I seem to have solved this by using Double Twist.

DT finds absolutely everything I have on all accounts and on the external HD I use for my Time Machine backups. Once I see the title of the song/movie/audiobook in DT, I do a spotlight search for it. I can then open it in iTunes, and once it's there, it's there - I can import it to my iPod or watch it from iTunes in my new account.

The same seems to work for my pictures, they import into iPhoto.

One last question: Once I've done this and can access everything via my new account, is there any reason I can't go ahead and delete the old account?
 
Nope. If all of your important files are out of your old home folder, you should be able to delete it. Just bear in mind that just because something has been imported into iTunes doesn't necessarily mean it has been copied, so try right-clicking on a few rescued songs and selecting Show in Finder in order to see where the originals are.
 
Thanks, I didn't realise you could use Finder like that. I just checked about 20 titles (music, TV shows, movies, audiobooks), and they all show as variants of this: usernameofmynewaccount -> Movies-> iTunes -> iTunes Media -> TV Shows -> nameofTVshow.

So I guess I'll spend a couple more days making sure I've got everything where I want it, then finally nuke the old account.
 
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