Help! iTunes renamed and moved all my songs!

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Kurt871

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Oh my god, I hope that you guys can help me. Here's a run down of everything. First, in my My Music folder, I have all my music sorted in to folders my genre. When I opened iTunes, I initally moved the "iTunes Music" folder from "My Music\iTunes" because I didn't want it creating a new folder in there. Everything was going great until I clicked "File", then "Add folders..". When I went to my My Music folder, I found that a million new folders were created by artist name, and that all of my music had been moved from their previous locations to these new artist folders. What's more, my music files appear to have actually been renamed in the process! Please help me fix this (if it is fixable). It makes my playlists useless because they can't find the files anymore (they point to my previous system). Thank you so much for any help you can provide.

Kurt
 

Kurt871

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I apologize for my ignorance on not reading furthur down, I was just very upset. After reading those, I take it that there is no way at all to put things back the way they were? All of my playlists are useless now because they can't find where music is now.
 

Adam

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Yep, your music is dead.

Just do a big cut and paste job now. Hopefully you don't have a bucketload of songs, otherwise you'll be at it for a while.
 

ashawley

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Woah, folks. A tag editor will let you rename your tracks. A good one at least. That is of course assuming you had your tracks tagged well and your naming scheme is standard across all your files.

Adam
 

Kurt871

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I have about 1,500 songs. This is gonna take me years to do... I think I might cry... would a system restore possibly work?
 
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Casual

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Got me too man, I just spend the last 6 hours doing everything again
 

hyuk1

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Any time you use new software, always make a backup of your files and data and especially your MP3's. I had a feeling iTunes would pull this kind of nonsense. So do you know what I did? I copied all my MP3s to another location on my hard drive, installed iTunes and discovered it moved and renamed all my folders. When I discovered this, I patted myself on the back and thanked God for making a backup of my MP3's. What do you expect for free? I work in IT and just know that it's important to prepare for disasters. I'm sorry that you had to go through this. Many users who are not in the IT field don't have the benefit of knowing that software is always buggy or has unexpected results when first released! Don't go away too upset. You learned a new lesson ....unfortunately the hard way.....and that is to backup your files before installing any....I mean any new software! Good luck!
 

Surf Monkey

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hyuk1 said:
I had a feeling iTunes would pull this kind of nonsense.
Well, of course it's all a matter of perspective. The whole idea behind iTunes is that you allow it to manage your actual files and then you use the iTunes interface to do everything else. You do all your organizing, play listing, renaming, grouping by genre, disc burning etc. etc. etc. in iTunes. If you use it the way it's meant to be used you never have to mess with the actual files at all.

Everyone has his/her own style. I used to manage everything manually but iTunes (I'm on a Mac) sold me on doing it all in the application.
 
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am3822

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Shame I didn't read this post earlier... I had a whole bunch of mp3 files with names like 19580812-006-005-some goon show.mp3 and now it (itunes) has removed all the stuff other than the actual name.

Is there a way to configure itunes to leave filenames alone?
 

Surf Monkey

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am3822 said:
Shame I didn't read this post earlier... I had a whole bunch of mp3 files with names like 19580812-006-005-some goon show.mp3 and now it (itunes) has removed all the stuff other than the actual name.

Is there a way to configure itunes to leave filenames alone?
Yep. Under Preferences -> Advanced just uncheck the button that says "Keep iTunes Music Folder Organized."
 

godcha

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Yea I am happy I've read some topics prior to installing iTunes, especially deselecting the option to have iTunes organize my music folder and the "add manually later" option when starting iTunes for the first time. I am attached to my file management and would hate to have seen iTunes move my mp3 files in any way.

My existing mp3 folder is untouched and is set to my default iTunes music folder :D
 
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