How to get itunes to read from original music folder location

[el_brato]

Hi,
I've just got a new macbook and have been transferring my music from my old pc library to itunes on my mac. Having made an .xml file of my library on my pc I eventually got this to work on my macbook by checking the consolidate library feature.

Trouble is this has copied all of my music into an itunes music folder as well as leaving the original files in their location on the same drive. I don't want this new folder as it just lists all my music by folder name (no organisation by subfolders and such like) and takes up unnecessary space. My questions are:

How do i get itunes to read from the original music location on the drive rather than the itunes music folder? And then can i delete this itunes music folder.

Appreciate any help - everyone else online seems to want to delete their their original location and keep the itunes music folder!

[cjmnews]

If you have a backup of the iTunes Library.itl file from before the Consolidate, then you can restore it and open iTunes to access your music in the old locations.

You might be lucky and iTunes made a backup for you in Previous iTunes Library with the date of the Consolidate embedded in the file name. Copy that file out to the iTunes directory, remove the date open iTunes and you should have your songs in the old location back.

Your other option is to delete the iTunes Library.itl file and reload your music from the old location. You lose playlists, ratings etc. But you get to delete the new copy of the music.

[bwh79]

...or, you know, just keep the new copies, delete the old ones, and let iTunes do all the file management itself:

Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Keep iTunes Media folder organized.

If you have this option selected, then the files should be put into subfolders such as "../iTunes Media/Music/Artist Name/Album Name/[disc number] [track number] Song Name.mp3", and any time you update the songs' tags from within iTunes, the files will be moved around accordingly. This saves you the trouble of ever having to care what folder your music's in, as iTunes will always know where it is and will keep things up to date when any changes are made. The only issue is if you need to access the same files with other applications, which would then lose track of them when their name or location was changed by iTunes. But if you always play your files from within iTunes, then this shouldn't be a problem.

Only files that are actually in the iTunes Media folder or one of its subfolders will be managed like this, however. Any files in other locations will not be moved or renamed. To combat this, you can either move files into the iTunes Media folder before importing into iTunes, or else right underneath "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" there is another checkbox for "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library." With this option checked, any time you add a new music or video file to iTunes, it will make a copy in the Media folder. Then, you can do whatever you want with the original file, like delete it from its other location, or move it to your system folder and rename it HELOKITY.GIF (personally, I just delete them.)