If you’ve ever used iTunes for any length of time, you have had the dreaded exclamation point error. It is ridiculous and it should have been fixed in iTunes 2.0. Seriously, do the people who write this software ever use it?
In your iTunes music library, you’ll see some songs that have “!” next to them. If you try to play them it will say, “the song could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?” Then, you can navigate to the file to match it to the song in the library.
If you have ONE OR TWO !’s this is no big deal. A few clicks fixes it.
If you have HUNDREDS of exclamation points, it is impossible. Do you actually want me to click to do this HUNDREDS of TIMES Apple? And I should point out, it is easy to have hundreds of exclamation points if you move your iTunes library, or add a hard drive, or have something crash, or clone a machine, or change a samba drive.
Please don’t waste your time posting a work-around to fix this, and don’t direct me to the same thing in the Apple Discussion Forums. I appreciate your help, but those workarounds often screw the whole library up and often result in even more !’s.
Rather than just complain. I am going to provide Apple with the solution to mybiggestcomplaint about iTunes. You can save us from exclamation point hell, by giving us a search function where I can tell iTunes to search the following folder(s) and than match up the missing songs to the original file. Seriously Apple, you have the technology to make Spotlight and a simple boolean will match the file names up. Why not save us all from this hair pulling? It’s completely unnecessary.
It’s not just me, either. Look at the iTunes Discussion Forum or search google. This drives everybody crazy. I love my iPods and iTunes generally works fine, but you’re killing us with this.
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Same with other media players and Windows Movie Maker. Every time your move something, you have to relocate everything. It makes me mad!
Lawrence on August 27th, 2007 at 10:31 pm | Link
Advice.
Don’t move you’re iTunes library, or it’ll **** up.
If you do, just delete the iTunes Library file with iTunes shut and open iTunes again. And add the hole iTunes folder to your library.
Easy enough.
Joe O'Reilly on August 28th, 2007 at 11:40 am | Link
WOW. I just found something no one else has, to solve this DAMN “!” issue.
My network share would drop, and itunes would reck my iphone playlist with exclamation points. Try this:
Highlight the playlist. then go to FILE -> Export. Just save it as a TXT file.
Presto, all ! are gone.
Dan
Dan on November 11th, 2007 at 10:46 am | Link
Dan! You are the MAN! Now, if I can just get my iPod to sync without the stupid !!! coming back. I’ll keep you posted! Thanks
Jennifer on January 2nd, 2008 at 12:46 am | Link
I just tried that and it didnt’ work for me.
Tone on January 3rd, 2008 at 3:56 pm | Link
I’ve had this issue and may have a solution if you are using an Apple computer, provided that your songs are still in your iTunes library.
In my case, I am using an external hard drive to store my iTunes library. Even though my songs are exactly where they should be, (for example, G:iTunes:Beatles:Abbey Road:Come Together), iTunes gives me the exclamation point because it can’t find some songs. I had my iTunes music folder directory set as G[external hard drive]:iTunes in iTunes…Preferences…Advanced…General. , but iTunes still couldn’t find the songs. It was like it wasn’t even looking in the directory I was telling it to look in. Very frustrating.
If you are using iTunes on an Apple computer, hold down the Option key while launching iTunes. iTunes should then ask you to point it to your iTunes library. Choose the directory where the library is located and I think that iTunes should find all the songs that had exclamation points, provided that they were still in the library. You would think that this is what the iTunes…Preferences…Advanced…General…iTunes music library location setting should do every time it opens, but apparently not.
I hope this helps at least one person.
Jim on January 6th, 2008 at 6:01 pm | Link
Thanks Jim, that worked like a charm on my Windows box!
Windows users, just hold the Shift key while launching iTunes to bring up the library selection dialog.
John on January 13th, 2008 at 8:15 am | Link
problem is, is that i moved folders around inside the main itunes folder (trying to reorganize for example putting the wav files and mp3 files of an artist in one folder instead of two separate folders or by deleting duplicates since I had two external hard drives each containg some of the same files) so I feel like I dont know what to do now…
jonathan on January 14th, 2008 at 7:33 am | Link
Jim, you’re a feakin’ genius, no more annoying exclamation marks, I can stop grinding my teeth at night.
pa-ula on January 22nd, 2008 at 1:51 pm | Link
I am having the same issue but mine might be a little unique, so not sure if that is why the above dont seem to be working.
I have 7000+ songs in my library. Every single one of them is listed twice. One works, the other doesnt (and has an exclamation point). I am not sure exactly WHY this happened, but it did, and I know when it did. I bought my wife a laptop, and she installed iTunes and it started “finding” all the music (across our network share). Strangely, her installation of iTunes even found all of the playlists that I had created on the primary computer.
But I digress. She doesnt need iTunes on her laptop, so that part is an easy fix - we’ll remove it and use a different program for her to listen to the music across the network share.
iTunes wont let me sort by the ! field, so I am at a loss as to what to do in order to remove these 7000+ !’s. I feel like I dont need to “relink” them to the original files - the other entries are there and work fine.
Ideas?
Thanks!
Jeff on January 26th, 2008 at 12:47 pm | Link
Eureka!
As soon as I cliked “Post Comment” I switched back over to iTunes, frustrated that I could not sort by the ! field.
So I took a look at what other fields I could display, and added “Date added”. I sorted by that, and sure enough, I was able to scroll to the date/time that my wife’s iTunes had started to discover all these songs, and there they were 7273 exclamation points, all in a row. From there it was easy to delete them.
I still dont understand what/why these 2 installations of iTunes did what they did, but ohh well, its working now!
Thanks!
Jeff on January 26th, 2008 at 12:51 pm | Link
awesome, we can bitch here and find solutions for our problems, i’m bookmarking this place.
Andrew on February 28th, 2008 at 10:28 am | Link
How do I sort on them…. I just want to know if I have them!!!! (Have just reorganized my whole Itunes) hehehe
Heidy on March 5th, 2008 at 1:14 pm | Link
Heidy -
Thats the thing - you cannot sort them. Next time you sync to your iPod, iTunes should tell you “could not sync the following 100 files” or something like that, and then all the !’s will appear (if they were not there already). My issue was more that every single song was listed twice, with one of them being invalid, so for me sorting by “Date Added” worked very well.
But other times, you might reorganize some music, and create the same problem. Say you had a folder called “Blues”, and you decided to move all those songs by BB King, Albert King, etc., into your “My Music” folder. You have iTunes re-add them to your library, but now all those old songs are !’s. I think in that kind of case you would have to just sift through and delete them.
I am sure there are better ways to manage these kinds of moves from within iTunes, and maybe someone else can elaborate on that - I despise iTunes for its many weaknesses and flaws - I only use it for syncing, and tend to use other apps/tools for anything else I want to do.
Jeff on March 5th, 2008 at 1:30 pm | Link
I HATE WHEN THIS HAPPENS! exclamation points are appearing next to totally random songs in my library, and i have no idea why and/ or how to get rid of them! i’ve tried all the things people said on this forum but nothing’s working, anyone have any ideas?
stef on March 11th, 2008 at 6:31 pm | Link
I have all of my songs on my external hd and a few days ago my itunes stopped recognizing the location.
all of my many songs have the ever-frustrating “!”.
i have changed the location of my library in preferences and changed it back with no success. i can find individual songs successfully but cannot solve en masse.
i have tried all of the methods listed here. the ‘preferences>advanced’ way didnt change anything, it was still showing the correct location.
the ‘open itunes>hold option’ didnt work as it said my external hd itunes folder was not recognizable as having an itunes library (or something along those lines).
i have mac os x but have not updated my itunes lately (my safari freezes my g5 -yet another fun one to tackle).
please, if anybody can help i will be forever grateful as my life has been virtually silent and frustrating.
James on March 26th, 2008 at 12:24 pm | Link
I am using a PowerBook 17″ with an external Apple keyboard. When trying to hold the “option” key to get itunes to ask for the library, I didn’t get anything. I then unplugged the keyboard and it worked with the internal keyboard.
I’m really glad I found this post, those stupid exclamations were driving me !!!!!!! crazy. You’re going on my RSS feed.
hope this helps someone.
bert boan on April 2nd, 2008 at 10:31 am | Link
Oh, I also unplugged my iPod to make sure it wasn’t pulling bad info from there. Don’t know which worked but I no longer have the issue.
bert boan on April 2nd, 2008 at 10:33 am | Link
I found a solution that worked for me where all the others failed. The downside is it takes a lot of disk space.
1) Figure out where iTunes thinks your missing files are. you can do this by looking at the iTunes Music Library.xml file and find a song that has the ! next to it. Note the path.
2) Copy your iTunes Music to the path it expects.
3) Start iTunes and go to Advanced | Consolidate Library. This will copy music from the copy of the library to the real library.
4) Repeat for every additional path it expects to find music.
If you don’t have enough disk space for an entire copy of iTunes Music, try parts of your library instead.
Alan K on April 4th, 2008 at 6:15 pm | Link
I held down shift on my PC and selected the .itl in the hopes of getting rid of my exclamation points, but now I’ve managed to revert iTunes back to an OLD library. I’m missing playlists and many albums. I can’t figure out how to get it back to the way it was.
Please help!
katie on April 15th, 2008 at 9:58 pm | Link
I have the same problem regarding my external hard drive. It doesn’t recognise the link anymore. I tried to hold shift on my laptop and it ask me if I can locate my library or create a new one. When I click on locate library and point it to my G external hard drive, I cannot click ok as it ask me more where to look, even if I open a specific song. How can I locate library to my whole Itune file in my external hard drive?
Dominique on May 12th, 2008 at 11:47 pm | Link
OMG! I was up all last night frustrated about these stupid exclamation points. When I close out of Itunes and reopen it all the songs do not have exclamation points next to my songs, UNTIL I connect my IPOD with my USB. Then it shows the exclamation point next to all my songs. At one point all these songs were synced, until I decided to add one more song to my IPOD, now it deleted all these songs that WERE on my IPOD. Now I can’t get them back on there. I am so frustrated…can someone please help me….
Jennifer Novak on May 21st, 2008 at 4:34 am | Link
hey is there a way, after deleting your entire library accidentally, to recover the info from your iPod or am I out of luck.
I ask this only because my whole cd case (over 200) cds were stolen and they aren’t on my iPod or computer anymore because my computer synced after I had to reboot my computer because there was a virus in the registry. Bad Huh? Trust me I know
SO PLEASE IF YOU CAN, HELPPPPPPPPPP!
Ashley on May 21st, 2008 at 1:53 pm | Link
if you’re using Mac OS, THE MOST AMAZING SCRIPT EVER WRITTEN:
search GOOGLE for: super remove dead tracks
click on the first link - DougsAppleScripts for iTunes
Follow the instructions. Wizardry. FREE….Then give the guy 5 bucks. You’ll want to give him more than that, I promise.
al on May 25th, 2008 at 8:46 pm | Link
Jim!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
brilliant. All you have to do is hold down ctrl and alt when opening itunes. Problem solved! i dont even know how that works, but it did
Jelani on June 18th, 2008 at 3:25 pm | Link
my husband and I are both having the same troubles listed by everyone here (!!!! from hell) PLUS….our itunes library is CLONING itself. It looks like this:
itunes are playing of external HD just fine for days. Then suddenly the stupid !!! start showing up. I check my advanced preferences and nothing has changed, it still points to the HD. BUT….songs are missing, so I look inside the folder called “itunes music” and there is a folder called “itunes” and the music is in there. All of it. But I did not create that folder, and the same thing has happened on my husband’s laptop, and he is pointing the music source to his completely separate HD. So the same problem is occuring on both computers. So it’s not the computer, it’s not the HD, it’s the program. so has anyone else had the itunes music folder clone itself?
monica on July 6th, 2008 at 5:59 am | Link
To get rid of exclamation points for files that no longer exist, I selected every song in the library (CTRL + A) and selected Get Info > Change Info for All Selected Files.
In the Info window, I changed the BPM to 1 (can be anything). After a few minutes, all files that were available had a BPM of 1, but the files that iTunes can’t find did not.
If you then sort your library by BPM, all the exclamation mark files will be at the top of the list, ready to be deleted.
Tom Lawton on July 27th, 2008 at 7:52 pm | Link
I shared everyone’s frustrations about the exlamation points and just now solved the problem. I “consolidated” the library under the “advanced” tab. Apparently this allowed the I-Tunes gremlins to figure out that some of my music was on my external hard-drive. When I unplugged the external harddrive it couldn’t find those songs. I find I-tune “hel” totally useless. I hope this works for some of you. I’ve spent hours and hours on this problem! Good luck.
Glenda on August 1st, 2008 at 7:18 pm | Link
Sorting by Add date was the fix I needed, I doubled my folder by dragging in from my external hard drive.
Just got to say thanks for the suggestion… BRILLIANT!!
Matt on August 4th, 2008 at 10:40 pm | Link
Man I’m glad there’s a workaround for this (holding down the option key while iTunes starts). Every once in a while my network drive with my music disconnects and iTunes goes into exclamation point hell.
Joe on August 5th, 2008 at 1:54 pm | Link
SOLUTION
I struggled with this problem several times after moving my library (140GB) from an external to an internal and all that over the years.
A number of solutions have been proposed on various messages boards that you get when you google this problem - I have tried them all and none worked for my specific problem with the exclamation points.
I just completely fixed my problem - this might not work for everyone.
in Music/iTunes/ if you have been using iTunes for any length of time there will be a folder called Previous iTunes Libraries - DELETE this and restart iTunes - as long as you have (in iTunes prefs) the correct path listed for your actual iTunes music file library this should clear up the problem.
The problem (I think) is caused because of all the old backups of libraries when the files would all have been in different locations (on an external for example - or when you have more albums from the same artist or whatever)
hope this helps
Dave Steele on August 10th, 2008 at 10:09 am | Link
I’ve been struggling with this for months - I manage my music in seperate genre folders and drag/drop them into iTunes every once in a while after I’ve updated the tags - resulting in multiple duplicate records in iTunes..
The “creation Date” method seems to work best for me, having just deleted over 2,000 entries in mere moments. I still had a few duplictes to clean up by hand, so am looking for another method.
The BPM method could work, however, I’m in the process of populating that field. I’m looking at the other available fields.
Sure wish I could find a good dupe finder / comparison tool for MP3s. Godfather seems teh best so far.
Good luck, all!
Earl G on August 13th, 2008 at 6:29 pm | Link
Heres a solution that works through the ‘rating’ field. İf you rate your files (I don’t) you will have to improvise with other fields. 1- Go to library - Music 2 - Select all 3- Get info 4 - Rate 1 star ( At this point the files with the broken links will not we rated. 5 - Sort on ‘Rating’. The files with the ! are all together now. 6 - Delete all unrated files. As a caution select ‘keep files on disk’ if your not sure what you are deleting.
Kutlu Kanberoğlu on August 24th, 2008 at 9:23 am | Link
Thanks Tom L, well done. - BPM fix
SANDIP on August 25th, 2008 at 11:27 pm | Link
JIM IS A GOD! thank you. hold option(mac) shift(windows), point to your library file, voila.
timmy on September 1st, 2008 at 5:10 pm | Link
Problem #1
a friend recently gave me an external hard drive of over 6,000 songs. Not knowing that itunes automatically downloads them, I copied them all to my itunes folder - now having at least 2 of each. ALL have !!!! So, I can’t listen to them unless I have the drive connected.
Problem #2
My previous library has somehow been converted to a Safari file. I can’t access any of that music at all.
I’m using Windows XP.
Would be BEYOND relieved if someone can help! Thanks!
Samantha on September 4th, 2008 at 8:43 pm | Link
I play my music via a PSP. I am on a PC and I just changed the source of my itunes folder in Prefs–>Advanced and it worked.
Justin on September 5th, 2008 at 7:11 am | Link
My Library is also on an external drive attached to my wireless network. Itunes never seems to remember where all the songs are and the option-click to open does not work. I am a mac user. Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Travis
Travis on September 10th, 2008 at 1:18 pm | Link
I recently re did my itunes library and got exclamation points on all songs that were purchased from a vendor other than itunes. Now I can’t even find them on my hard drive. But they are still listed on my itunes library.
Any suggestion on how to reclaim these songs?
Gregory Kurtz on September 10th, 2008 at 7:18 pm | Link
I still haven’t solved my problems listed above. I think I’ve narrowed down the issue though.
I was attempting to consolidate all the music on my computer by dragging it into my itunes folder. After that, my “itunes music folder,” which contained a large portion of my recently purchased and downloads became missing. All of the music I’m missing is still listed in my music/itunes, but the folders are empty. I know this strays from the exclamation thread, but I’m hoping one of you technically savvy folks will have an answer…
Samantha on September 11th, 2008 at 12:04 pm | Link
Gee…it seems that the Apple folks aren’t quite as ‘user friendly’ as I am led to believe by my Mac buddies. This “!” issue with iTunes is ridiculous. And I’ve tried to hold down my SHIFT key on start-up. I do get the dialogue box, but it seems to want to force me into a FILE and not a FOLDER. It will not accept my folder name, and is looking for an iTunes file extension??? TOTALLY RIDICULOUS! My observation is that, in many ways, Apple is doing the same stupid crap that MicroSoft does. Dumb engineering…seemingly no field testing…or maybe the Apple people think the world revolves around their approach and syntax?? Bee… sounds like MicroSoft to me.
Meanwhile, I will continue to try and figure out why my library is not being recognized as THE library, and find a fix without having to manually fix 4500 songs. I have a feeling that, by now somebody has written software to help.
Maybe I’ll download the latest iTunes update, which usually screws something up, or gives me yet ANOTHER version of Quicktime….thus, the reason that I have not updated in a while.
Let’s hope that AppleSoft gets it together with their music management software.
Jim on September 15th, 2008 at 7:59 am | Link
Just updated from iTunes 7 to iTune 8 … Now 10% of x 1000’s tracks have the ! … Just GREAT! Friggin Apple … I HATE YOU!
Pete on September 23rd, 2008 at 4:38 pm | Link
I have an epsecially hard problem i transfered all 300 of my songs from the windows music player BUT when it went to itunes it created from 2 to 8 copies of each song and it’s hell to create playlists, if anyone has a solution i will be very greatful. Thank you.
Jeff on September 25th, 2008 at 4:06 pm | Link
One thing most people don’t know is all of your songs are stored as names such as “ABYZ” in your itunes Music folder and these actually stand for specific names to songs, for instance “ABYZ” could really be the file for “Hotel California.mp3″ The trick to getting rid of those damned ” ! ” points is to find this folder with all the songs named differently ( it will be a folder named Music that appears to be faded) and open it up and inside you will find other folders such as “F01″ “F002″ etc. These files are essentially your itunes library broken up into parts. All you have to do is copy all of these files into a separate folder and then IMPORT that file to your itunes library (by clicking on File then Add Folder to Library in itunes) and then volia the ” ! ” will be gone!
Brett on October 1st, 2008 at 11:44 am | Link
THank you so much i couldn’t get album art work but now i can thanks ssssoooooo much dave
Amy on October 5th, 2008 at 8:56 am | Link
In Windows, holding down the CTRL key while starting iTunes works! Thanks everyone.
Dan H on October 13th, 2008 at 12:28 pm | Link
ok guys. it s cool to read so many guys who re having the same ****ing problem.
my case:
- windows xp
- external hdd with folder “1. iPod music”
-> imported all of them in itunes. -> have been busy 3 weeks cleaning music up and finding artwork and stuff like that.. everything was working perfectly.
-> since today all “!’-zzzzzzz and it s making me dizzy.
i tried many things already .. change in options held down shift.. but nah.
the thing is that it would be easy to put back in but the only problem is that the original file where all the music was stored (1. ipod music) is the old version of my itunes library.. so if i do it again i lost 3 weeks of work again… so you guys can imagine it makes me sweat..
oh did i mention i was talking about 45 gb music? wo guys pleazzzze if u can help me… please do so… if i start itunes up again the “!” are gone.but as soon as i try to play one the go to “!”
i forgot to mention i put 2 new albums in itunes… but they were stored on the comp hdd..
Lander on October 29th, 2008 at 9:55 am | Link
I have the ultimate solution: uninstall iTunes and install MacAmp.
The most frustrating thing about iTunes for me is that you have to create playlists every single time you want to play some songs. The fact alone makes iTunes a joke.
MacAmp allows you to play anything without having to constantly create playlists.
Free yourself form the nightmare of iTunes now and install MacAmp.
Max on November 20th, 2008 at 10:51 pm | Link
Max, do you have a suggestion for those on a pc?
Samantha on November 21st, 2008 at 6:23 am | Link
that would be WinAmp
Jon on November 26th, 2008 at 12:30 pm | Link
Earl was looking for a duplicate eliminator.
Try doublekiller.exe
You should find it with google.
I think it’s shareware. It’s slick!
Mike on November 28th, 2008 at 10:42 am | Link
yup like everyone my ipod music has a exclamation mark next to all my songs and its pissin me right off because it doesnt let me sync or listen to them ………. it sucks SOOOOOOOOOOOO bad please help !!!!!
chloe on December 1st, 2008 at 12:52 am | Link
I have dups of everything in my music library–one live, attached to one or more playlist, one missing with ! (in a few cases there are more than 2 versions of a selection). Does anyone know if the latter are really taking up significant space? I’ve seemed to separate the wheat from chaff with the rating/bmp method recommended above, but if iTunes is wrong about the size of the library, I may just leave well enough alone, since my playlists don’t seem to be affected.
John on December 1st, 2008 at 12:29 pm | Link
I had the same exclamation problem, for weeks. I copied all music into “itunes/itunes music” folder. Then I went to file and “add folder to library”. I chose the itunes music folder and voila it worked like magic. No more exclamation marks… I hope that helps.
William on December 21st, 2008 at 6:51 pm | Link
I have to agree. I LOATHE, AND DESPISE ITUNES because of this extreme annoyance. Everyone comes to me to fix their mac and pc problems (I work in the field) and the first thing I tell people is, ditch itunes if at all possible. Only use it for application updates, other than that, use mediamonkey or some other software. This exclamation error has been around too long. You hear me apple? TOO LONG! ARRGGHHH
Miguel on December 22nd, 2008 at 8:09 pm | Link
My exclamation marks appeared because I had songs that weren’t saved in the itunes folders, just the library, but tbf my library was in my itunes folder. The laptop we have only just got didn’t have itunes so i installed it for free. Then I installed this service called ipod to computer transfer, because the music i wanted was on my ipod. So I figured out a way to do this for free. The music on my ipod was listed in the ipod to computer transfer program and i just clicked on the songs i didn’t have in my library and they were transfered to my library in an instant. But after a while, suddenly they just appeared next to these songs, and I don’t know whether to re-import these songs from the cd’s and rebuy some again off the itunes store or figure out another way. Can anyone help me with this? Henry
Henry on December 23rd, 2008 at 8:15 am | Link
Re-creating the iTunes Library file
Follow these steps:
Quit iTunes.
Locate your iTunes folder.
For Mac OS X the iTunes folder is stored in one of the following locations:
/Users/[your username]/Music
For Microsoft Windows XP and 2000 the iTunes folder is stored in:
\Documents and Settings\[your username]\My Documents\My Music\
For Microsoft Windows Vista the iTunes folder is stored in:
\Users\[your username]\Music\
Open your iTunes folder.
Drag the iTunes Music Library.xml to the Desktop
Drag the following file from your iTunes folder to the Trash:
Mac OS X: “iTunes Library” (in versions of iTunes prior to 4.9 this was called “iTunes 4 Music Library”)
Microsoft Windows: “iTunes Library.itl” (in versions of iTunes prior to 4.9 this was called “iTunes 4 Music Library.itl”)
Open iTunes.
From the File menu, choose Library > Import Playlist.
Tip: Do not add any music into iTunes at this point.
Navigate to the iTunes Music Library.xml file on the Desktop.
Mac users: Click Choose.
Windows users: Click Open.
After re-creating your library, any devices that you sync with iTunes (Apple TV, iPod, etc) will see your iTunes library as a new library and will completely resync.”
For steps to backup and restore playlists see “iTunes: How to backup and restore playlists. ”
If your podcasts list in iTunes is empty after following these steps, see article HT2562.
If the iTunes Music Library.xml file is not available, follow the “Add to library” steps in “iTunes: About the Add to Library, Import, and Convert functions” to add files back to the Library (because the iTunes Music Library.xml file is not available, playlists and other information will not be available).
Dennis on December 25th, 2008 at 3:31 pm | Link
Sorry this doesn’t help me. Does any1 else know how to fix my problem? Henry
Henry on December 26th, 2008 at 5:48 am | Link
Super Remove Dead Tracks v2.1 from Doug’s AppleScripts for ITunes, at http://dougscripts.com/itunes/.....deadsuper, did the trick for me.
Michael Vorburger on December 27th, 2008 at 2:21 pm | Link
Jim, you rock! Thank you, thank you , thank you.
craig m. on December 31st, 2008 at 2:01 pm | Link
Does anyone know how iTunes stores the “exclamation point”? There is no change to the library XML file after ‘fixing’ files with exclamation points, so it’s clearly not stored there.
Adam on January 2nd, 2009 at 3:08 pm | Link
that ‘date added’ trick totally worked, thanks!
craig sarachene on January 6th, 2009 at 9:14 pm | Link
am pulling my hair out now after to many hours on this issue.. Surely Apple must be able to sort this issue by now.
My itunes library is 5+ yrs old now and therefore 10,000 songs, numerous podcasts, videos etc etc. not to mention loads of rating information, hundreds of playlists created from last played, rating, genre etc etc, therefore i cannot afford to loose all this valuable data attached to my itunes library. However recently half of my library appeared with exclamation marks all over it, though i cannot work out why as all the music files are in the location specified in preferences, path etc.
It seems that itunes just wont bother looking at this path and syncing with whatever is there. Yeah fine i can add the whole itunes music folder again and it will import every song again so i go from 10,000 to 20,000 songs, i could deal with this with a dupe eliminator that are freelu available on the net but the new imports without the exclamation marks cleary dont have the historical data of play counts, last played ratings etc etc attached to them so its no different from deleting and starting again.
I have tried all the options in this post and none of them deal with the simple issue of just look at the location that it listed in the preferences and search for the file u think is missing on mass!!!
Its not rocket science so why havent Apple fixed this. !!!
If anyone has got a solution for this or work around that doesnt involve completly writing off years of rating and creating playlists based on numerous historical data then i would be bery appreciative!!
alan on January 10th, 2009 at 5:49 pm | Link
Uhh, I getting so mad with these !!!. I just bought a whole new computer and I want all my ratings and play counts on it. All my ratings/play counts are there but all my songs have !!!. I tried the holding shift when staring up itunes and I picked my library and the exclamation points went away but then when I pick a song to play it, it comes back
I found a application that can transfer all my songs/play count/ratings from my ipod to itunes but the only problem is its $20 and I dont want to pay $20 dollars since im only going to use it once. Im still trying to fiugre this out, im so mad.
Hector on January 11th, 2009 at 4:42 pm | Link
Hey guys,
just another trick that worked for me after weeks and weeks of googling, testing scripts without finding a solution:
In my case, 800 songs where marked with an exclamation mark. I always thought, iTunes looses its connection to the files, because I’ve got and external drive, which is not always present (i.e. at work), which contains all if my Music. My assumption was, that iTunes saves the broken link in his library, when I was trying to play a song while it is not present. If I check the files with CMD + I, iTunes specifies the location as “not available” instead of displaying the original (but broken) path.
In an older post on this page somebody mentioned to take a look into the library XML file to determine, where iTunes *think* the file is. And: Bingo! Allthough iTunes don’t show a location in his frontend, the library file knows a path to the file.
Now I realised, that while I was reorganising my iTunes files some months ago, a wrong, temporar Volume name glitched into iTunes. The 800 lost files were linked in a volume called “Audio_old”, but they were on “Audio” in the meantime.
So, here ist the solution: If your problem is similiar to mine and you have got an amount of files with are in an intact (means unchanged) folder structure, but in an different root folder than iTunes think, you can simply build an symbolic link, so iTunes can locate all the music again. Now you can consolidate all your Music in the actual folder.
In my case, I did the following:
1. Check the XML file, where iTunes think, the files are. In the exmaple above, iTunes think, they are on a volume called “Audio_old”
2. In the folder /Macintosh HD/Volumes, all the removale media is stored as a folder, if the media is present. If you have got a volume called “Audio” like me, you’ll find it in /Macintosh HD/Volumes/Audio.
3. Now create a symbolic link which points to the new location and is called like the old one. Use Terminal, browse to /Macintosh HD/Volumes an type the following:
ln - s ./Audio ./Audio_old
Now, the OS has got a link to Audio whenever someone (iTunes) searches in Audio_old.
The trick is to insert a link in the directory in which iTunes searches the root folder of ypur lost files. The link will work as a “fake” root folder for iTunes.
Unfortunately you can’t change the old links by changing the XML file as noted before. The only way to get the “real” path for all files in your library is to consolidate, which means, iTunes will copy all your files into one location and will create the folder structure as it likes.
But you can keep the symbolic link forever - that doesn’t hurt
Cornelis Kater on January 24th, 2009 at 9:17 am | Link
I had a problem with loads of exclamation marks on my music tracks.
ITunes didn’t let me play them and wanted me to find every track, one by one euch, bad idea Apple!
I noticed they were all on my external hard drive, on which I have been keeping my vinyl conversions (as separate from CD derived mps’s).
I looked at the xml file (iTunes Music Library.xml). Folder details were missing for the tracks with exclamation marks.
After looking on the net, I realised simple editing of the xml file was useless because itunes just overwrites the xml file with info from the itl file (iTunes Library.itl), and editing the itl file was beyond my abilities. However after a lot of messing I came up with a work-around.
This involved:
- Changing the xml file to have the corrected folder details
- Creating a dummy itl file
- Launching itunes which read the corrected xml file.
Hey presto exclamation marks are gone, music on an external drive is read normally and the metadata was kept.
What I did in detail was
Made backup copies of
“iTunes Music Library.xml”
“iTunes Library.itl”
In a safe place in case things go wrong, definitely not for editing.
And then in my iTunes folder:
Opened “iTunes Music Library.xml” with wordpad
I needed to prevent changes being made to the “ok” folder paths
the “ok” folder paths all began
Locationfile
so I changed them to temporarily begin as
Locationfile
Appended the missing folder paths by replacing all
Location
with
Locationfile://localhost/E:/Music/MP3 …etc
Reverted the text for the “ok” folder paths by replacing
Locationfile
with
Locationfile
Saved “iTunes Music Library.xml”
Deleted “iTunes Library.itl”
Saved an empty file, “iTunes Library.itl” with worpad, setting file type to text document.
Launched itunes
itunes thought the itl file was damaged, renamed it “iTunes Library (Damaged).itl”, and rebuilt the itl file from the data in the xml file.
I later deleted the bogus “iTunes Library (Damaged).itl”, hehe!
Snereck Tarp on January 31st, 2009 at 3:41 am | Link
Aw nuts, the post has HTML’d transforming meta keys into the text
Locationfile.
If anyone is interested the affected part of the post is reproduced below substituting “[” for “”:
I needed to prevent changes being made to the “ok” folder paths
the “ok” folder paths all began
[key]Location[/key][string]file
so I changed them to temporarily begin as
[key]Location[/key][string_ok]file
Appended the missing folder paths by replacing all
[key]Location[/key][string]
with
[key]Location[/key][string]file://localhost/E:/Music/MP3 …etc
Reverted the text for the “ok” folder paths by replacing
[key]Location[/key][string_ok]file
with
[key]Location[/key][string]file
Snereck Tarp on January 31st, 2009 at 3:56 am | Link
I just selected all the songs in my music folder, then control click, then select get info, then chose artist etc, left the fields blank and pressed ok. It updated all my songs and got rid of all exclamation marks in my whole library in just a few minutes.
Lindy on February 2nd, 2009 at 6:45 pm | Link
Hey guys,
I’m getting the same problem with the exlamation marks - it’s so annoying! I moved about 3000 songs from my laptop to an external hard drive to free up some space. Itunes keeps cropping up with exclamation marks next to really random songs (not all, maybe one in every five or something)..I thought from reading a bit on here that it was to do with having the songs in folders inside folders, so i copied and pasted the songs into one big folder and it still didn’t work. I’ve set itunes to search for my music on my hard drive but still no luck!!!! Please help! Thanks, Sarah
Sarah on February 8th, 2009 at 3:14 pm | Link
A variation of Snerecks method got iTunes going for me again. I have my music on an NFS share which at night gets automatically unmounted by the automount daemon and then re-mounted once I access it again the next day. Unfortunately re-mounting it takes just long enough to make iTunes think a few files are missing every day, which after a few months amounted to over half my library!
What I did:
* Quit iTunes
* Moved “iTunes Library” and “iTunes Music Library.xml” to another location
* Started iTunes - Hey, no MP3’s!
* Quit iTunes
* Moved the files back
* Started iTunes, and lo and behold, no exclamation marks and all tracks with their original meta-data
Dalroi on February 9th, 2009 at 11:56 am | Link
Hi just did a complete re-hack of my itunes XML / ITL files.
This is because with my external HD dying on me, I needed another external HD… which would be a back up for what was supposed to be a back up! And as the faulty drive was still under warranty I would end up with an additional drive letter… which is where all my MP3’s would be going for the time being. Yes, (sigh) I know it sounds strange but that’s how it is.
First I backed up my ITL and XML files.
Next I copied all my music from the faulty drive to the new (and bigger) external drive.
Then I and disconnected my faulty drive.
Next I assigned the drive letter for the new drive - this was necessary as I would be connecting and disconnecting drives, and as the itunes database expects fixed path info I needed to override XP’s automatic assignment of drive letters which could create problems.
I did this via
- right clicking on ‘My Computer’ and selecting ‘Manage’
- Clicking on ‘Disk Management’ from the ‘Computer Management’ pop-up
- at this point the top right hand part of the window listed my drives including external ones, by right clicking on the the appropriate drive I was given the option to ‘Change Drive Letter and Paths…’
- hey presto drive letter assignation possible.
I kept the folder structure with one change, I decided to modify path names to eliminate the space character, to make the XML file more friendly, if I needed to mess with it later.
After modifying the relevant folder names on the new drive using Windows Explorer, I opened “iTunes Music Library.xml” in Wordpad and started work on the XML file.
This involved a series of careful search and replaces. What I did was to look for the folder description - including the characters itunes uses in place of the ” ” (space character). Fortunately most of the affected info was in one area of the XML file.
Having trawled through the file, I was ready to test…
I saved it as an XML file, also made a back up copy of it, created an empty ITL file and launched.
iTunes created an ITL file from the XML file no problem, it worked. No problem so far.
On reflection this involved a considerable amount of editing text files, using search and replace, making backups and thinking through what I was doing.
If you choose to do something like this, happy editing!
Snereck Tarp on February 13th, 2009 at 5:22 am | Link
Sir Jeff,
I salute you!
Andrew on February 21st, 2009 at 3:56 am | Link
Jim, buddy. Whoever you are. You rule!!! Hold down CTRL and ALT while you are opening Itunes and viola!!!
Thanks.
Renee on February 21st, 2009 at 7:48 pm | Link
This is just stupid, Apple. My files never move. The NAS device where the iTunes folder lives mounts automatically every time I boot my Mac. I always wait a few minutes after booting before I start iTunes. Without fail, iTunes “can’t find” somewhere between 60-150 of the files. They’re all still there. I can “Get Info” on each individually and the filename pops up, then dismiss the Info panel and voila! The xclamation mark goes away. I don’t lose anything except patience as I have to “fix” this every time I synch an iPod or AppleTV. Some songs always get exclamation marks. Some only seem to have the problem periodically, some have only had the problem one time. Most times, entire albums get the exclamation marks, but sometimes, it’s just some of the files in an album, and the others from the same album — which are on the same NAS device in the same folder — don’t have an exclamation mark.
It’s annoying that we have to jump through hoops to fix this. It’s even omre annoying because there’s no way to make it work reliably or even find out why iTunes is putting those exclamation marks in there. And worst of all, there is no way to sort on the exclamation mark field, or to tell iTunes to get with the program and rescan its mistakes.
For all the clever programming Apple has done over the years, this really sticks out as poor design and/or poor product testing.
I guess we can just be glad that this isn’t Microsoft. It would be far worse, and your entire machine would become unusable if Microsoft were involved.
sottojoe on February 27th, 2009 at 10:44 am | Link
Well I thought Apple stuff was supposed to be
the greatest thing since sliced bread.It looks
like Apple sucks as bad as Micro$oft.My wife
has a Ipod and I have to put stuff on it for her
and it is a pain.Sorry for the Apple bashing but
it is frustrating to use.
Gene Saunders on February 28th, 2009 at 4:41 am | Link
I cleaned up my Windows XP by moving files around and so on, i moved the iTunes folder into a new music folder that i called media just to make it easier (all my iTunes are from lime wire if that makes any difference?) i didnt think that anythink would go wrong but now i open itunes and all my songs have exclamation marks on them !! What do i do ??
Dylan H on March 1st, 2009 at 3:29 pm | Link
The BETA Version of MediaMonkey 3.1 (link is listed in http://www.mediamonkey.com/for.....mp;t=34522)
has a NEW feature to copy your iPod back to your PC. This feature is called Auto-Organize.
See this document to make your switch to MediaMonkey easier.
Nick on March 3rd, 2009 at 10:12 pm | Link
Hi Dylan
Probably easiest to delete and forget those entries, and use the menu option File | Add Folder to Library for wherever your music is stored. I don’t recommend manual editing of the XML file (even though I did it - see earlier posts).
Snereck Tarp on March 4th, 2009 at 3:49 pm | Link
i love my ipod as well. but what i really hate is when i add a new folder to my libray, i have to search for every single song or video manually one by one. this is really a hassle. i wish there was a way to just find the new folder that was added and just copy all the songs to the play list i wanted. somebody help me, maybe its just me. i just got my ipod. so let me know if there is a solution for this.
Kelly on March 4th, 2009 at 6:42 pm | Link
i had this problem big time, and was blaming itunes
turns out, the real culprit was windows media player. it has some default settings to rename and relocate files.
so everytime i opened WMP (even unrelated to any of my music files, like playing a voicemail msg), it went to work messing up all my other files, all unknown to me. and then sure enough, itunes no longer could find the files.
so check your windows media player settings asap. at least for me, this was the source of continual corruption.
no-longer-blaming-itunes-man on March 6th, 2009 at 11:23 am | Link
no kidding. Ditto this exclamation problem is a drag.
papoluca on March 9th, 2009 at 9:07 pm | Link
Nothing happens when I hold down CTRL (or CTRL and ALT) when starting iTunes.
I moved ALL my music to a new external hard drive and now ALL my songs have exclamation points.
A few years ago I found a quick fix to this (instead of “locating” 3,000 songs by hand). What is it???
Mckenzie on March 11th, 2009 at 12:53 pm | Link
Exclamation points are shiite!! Nothing is working for me. Im at the end of this blog page. APPLE !! Help us you lazy ****ers.
Say10 on March 15th, 2009 at 8:47 pm | Link
i sold my zune, to switch to i-pod,i love the i-pod technology. But i spent a hole day working on my music, the this **** pops up beside all my songs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I spent 230 dollars 4 this ****…..
d mack on March 15th, 2009 at 9:52 pm | Link
Hey, I plugged an ipod, with a different library, into my computer. I set it so I could manually add music to it, because I wanted to keep the music on it. But now, there are tons of exclamation points in its library and it won’t play them on the ipod even though they show up on there. Is there anything I can do?
Steph on April 5th, 2009 at 9:53 am | Link
I can’t get over how difficult Apple has made something that should be so easy. People here are editing xml’s - copying this file from here to there - hold down this key for that and choose this.
Apple should do exactly what the original poster stated “You can save us from exclamation point hell, by giving us a search function where I can tell iTunes to search the following folder(s) and than match up the missing songs to the original file.”
I will be going back to my SIMPLE Sandisk mp3 player and throwing my nano in the trash. All I have to do to put songs in my little mp3 player is find them in Window Explorer and copy them to the Sandisk Drive. Wow, that was hard. And the next time someone tells me that Macs are easier I will laugh put my ear buds in and push play on my Sandisk player…
wow ugottobekiddingme on April 8th, 2009 at 10:45 pm | Link
When you add a playlist (m3u) to itunes, the xml file will only show path / folder details that were in the playlist file. So playlists without this info will lead to “!”. Presumably there are other causes too.
Snereck Tarp on April 11th, 2009 at 3:42 am | Link
Thanks for the trick of closing out itunes and reopening it while holding the”option” button for my mac. I was not able to load my songs when it asked me to choose where my itunes library stored was but what I did was create a new itunes library. Then I went to File/add to library and located my folder where all my songs are stored in my external drive. Now they are loading as we speak and no more !!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks. Almost done loading wish me luck 
Tina on April 18th, 2009 at 2:39 pm | Link
Jim, I want you! I want you now! I use windows. Just held down the shift key, as you said, and … presto! I hope that it holds through a sync. Thanx, Bonnie
Bonnie on April 20th, 2009 at 12:50 pm | Link
Jim, I did what you said (on a PC) and the exclamation marks went away but the original file still can’t be found, even though the “!” is gone. WTF????
Heidi on April 22nd, 2009 at 7:54 pm | Link
Well HELL. I tried some of the above and now every. single. song. I added to iTunes from a CD has a “!” next to it. If I bought it from iTunes store it is fine.
What have I done, and how do I fix it? I can listen to these songs but I cannot move them into playlists, etc.
ARGH
Heidi on April 22nd, 2009 at 8:39 pm | Link
This aggravates me to no end. Exclamation points will appear and disappear at complete random for me. Last time I used iTunes, nearly my whole library had been “cursed”. Once I opened iTunes today, I noticed one or two points, but last night’s plague was gone. As soon as I remedy the few that do have points, totally random songs in my library that were free of the exclamation point had obtained it. It isn’t an issue of reorganizing for me; it’s COMPLETELY ****ING RANDOM.
Jakobin on May 1st, 2009 at 6:50 pm | Link
I moved my music to a different external hard drive but iTunes would not let me access the songs and gave me a bunch of ! marks. I used Jim’s advice (above 2007, I think) and it worked great!! PC users can hold the “shift” key down while loading iTunes to choose the new location of your songs. Mac users can use “command.” Worked great! Thanks Jim!
Wendy on May 3rd, 2009 at 11:29 am | Link
Lindy you DID IT! If anyone is having the external drive problem, where the links have not been broken, that simple quick solution above is A GOD SEND. I don’t know what made you think of it, but my life just got a whole lot better.
dustin on May 5th, 2009 at 10:13 pm | Link
Dave Steele- YOU are a genius. Deleting the “Previous Itunes Libraries” folder worked.
Drew on May 6th, 2009 at 1:24 pm | Link
there is an ! next to songs that i have even bought! I am very frustrated and don’t want to be screwed.
Logan on May 10th, 2009 at 6:05 pm | Link
UGHHH !
my brother deleted my itunes and uploaded a newer version.
when i connected my iPod there were no “!” but then i wanted to upload an audiobook they appeared and it deleted ALL of my songs from my iPod.
then i tried the “holding the shift” and instead of getting rid of the “!” it deleted everything from my iTunes. EVERYTHING ! even the audiobook !
im going crazyy here !
Anna on May 13th, 2009 at 6:01 pm | Link
Many people have problems when relocating folders or using external hard drives, however, iTunes 8, Windows version, flags songs with the exclamation point for no reason at all, i.e., with absolutely no changes or updates to the songs. All I did was sync my iPod and over 200 songs had exclamation points. I suspect it is a bug in iTunes where the .itl or .xml index files get corrupted. It is possible that it may be path/file lengths because I have a lot of long names (OK for iTunes, but maybe the iPod Touch is more restrictive). It is absolutely amazing that Apple cannot find the cause of this problem in their development labs and fix it.
AN ACTUAL FIX FOR ME. OKAY…. I understand everyone’s frustration with this. It frustrated the hell out of me for a long time. But we’re going about it all wrong. SIMPLE RESOLUTION: Instead of trying to make iTunes do something that it is obviously not going to do, play nice with iTunes. iTunes is obviously not going to change its ways, so you must change yours. What the hell am I talking about? THIS:
In Apple land, go to your iTunes folder that possesses the iTunes Library.xml file. Open the .xml file, which should bring up Text Edit. It doesn’t matter what opens the file, as long as you can search through it. In Apple, press Control-F to bring up the Find window. Type in the name of one of the artists whose files are missing. Click Find Next until you find the missing song. It will take you to the string that refers to one of that artist’s songs. Each string (song) is slightly separated from each other, so it is easy to see where each song ends. Towards the last couple lines of that string you’ll see a line that includes the word “Location.” On that line, it shows you where iTunes thinks that file is. If you know you still have the original music, all you have to do is copy the music folders to the location it gives you. IT’S THAT SIMPLE.
Open up iTunes and try to play one of the missing songs. Presto!
It worked for me and I hope it works for you. An example of the .XML string is listed below for your viewing pleasure.
Track ID14283
NameTravel
ArtistThao
Album ArtistThao
AlbumWe Brave Bee Stings and All
GenreAlternative
KindMPEG audio file
Size2990922
Total Time107049
Disc Number1
Disc Count1
Track Number10
Date Modified2009-01-08T04:31:52Z
Date Added2009-01-08T04:41:08Z
Bit Rate220
Sample Rate44100
Artwork Count1
Persistent ID509ADE4FC9C7B0CE
Track TypeFile
File Type1297106739
File Creator1752133483
(HERE’S WHERE THE LOCATION IS!!!!!) Locationfile://localhost/Users/JimMartin/Music/eMusic/Thao/We%20Brave%20Bee%20Stings%20and%20All/We%20Brave%20Bee%20Stings%20and%20All_Thao_10_Travel.mp3
File Folder Count-1
Library Folder Count-1
Jimmy on May 24th, 2009 at 9:43 am | Link
So… I got a new computer, and I already had an external hard drive… I’ve consolidated my iTunes library onto my new computer, all the songs are there but everyone has an !! infront of it. If I double click the song will play, but if i set it to play a playlist or shuffle it will skip all !songs. I am using windows…please dont tell me I have to double click over 11,000 times!! :s
Lani on May 27th, 2009 at 11:12 pm | Link
Jimmy, I have no doubt your SIMPLE SOLUTION will work, but I am not going to do it over 250 times for the high volume of exclamation points. The recovery technique of deleting the .itl and having iTunes re-build the .xml works .. but why oh why can’t the geniuses at Apple fix a stupid software bug that corrupts their control files??
Allan on May 28th, 2009 at 2:34 pm | Link
oh my goshhhhh. i’ve been working on these !!!!! for hours…i’m tired, I’m frustrated, I’m getting soooo mad and I’m getting reallllly agitated I think I need XANAX…..:-
LAdy on May 30th, 2009 at 2:02 am | Link
Easily fixed……go to Control Panel>Add/Remove Programm>click on itunes>click the Change tab….then click the repair tab….go back onto Itunes and all of the exclamation marks should of dissapeard….if not all together try same process again..hey presto….
Titch on June 9th, 2009 at 11:59 am | Link
Thanks, Titch, I’ll try that the next time it happens. If it works it’s fantastic, and means that the iTunes installation/repair can detect there is a corrupted index file and can rebuild it from the XML and/or other information (no more complicated repair procedures). Now, if Apple had just found and fixed the software problem that damages the index file(s), all this dissatisfaction and hours of wasted time could have been avoided.
An iTunes 8.2 (Windows) update just arrived in the last 2 or 3 days, but I don’t know if anything has been done about our favorite problem.
A
i held down the shift button to bring up the “create a new” thing. it made itunes1. i found one of my songs under music / itunes / ipod games / itunes music /…this had all of my songs as i found. with a new library, itunes1, i did file / add folder to library. selected ipod games/ itunes and it found all my songs with no stupid !. problem solved.
Paul on June 14th, 2009 at 9:35 pm | Link
havent read all the comments here, so maybe someone else posted the same. I had the exclamation point problem on all my files in the library. I did an export like someone over here said. Didnt seem to do anything, still exclamation points all over. Tried to find a place to import with no luck. So i just synced my Iphone, and bang! Starts to copy all the “missing” music to my iphone, removing the exclamation points in the llibrary. Happy now!
Morten on June 20th, 2009 at 2:35 am | Link
I was lucky enough to find software called “itunes rating saver” which worked when nothing else did. Contact the creator at sam.wood@gmail.com. Good luck!
MG on June 27th, 2009 at 10:30 pm | Link