Itunes changed 'my music' folders around??? ;( Help please

planetdannii

aaaarghhhh I want to cry, I decided to download Itunes last night and start to use this as I'm about to buy an Ipod but I had messed up somehow....help

All my folders were very organised in my documents but now it's all changed to 'Artist' which means many folders contain only 1song under the artist.....all the hours I spent sorting it before have just got to waste.
How could this have happend?

I imported the whole folder of 'My Music' but why would it change it around////?????



Help how can I get it back?
I could do a system restore to last night but all night it had been converting hundreds of songs into Itunes so I would then loose them am I correct.........hmmmmm

Any help appreciated????

sra

That's strange

The setting that did that is in:

Edit/Preferences
Click the Advanced tab
Under the General tab, uncheck
Keep Itunes Music Folder Organized
Copy Files to Itunes Music Folder when adding to Library

That means that from now on, Itunes only lists the music in Itunes and doesn't actually move anything around. But that won't bring your music back to the old order.

But anyway, I didn't think Itunes move music. Whenever I've done it, it's made a copy of the music to the Itunes folder but left the original in its old place

bingo_bango

sra wrote:

But anyway, I didn't think Itunes move music. Whenever I've done it, it's made a copy of the music to the Itunes folder but left the original in its old place

I have a funny feeling that OP has clicked on 'Consolidate Library'. iTunes 7.0 asks if you want to do this during the initial setup, and would be really easy to do. This does move your music, and seems to be what has happened here.

Would a system restore reverse the problem? Or just get rid of iTunes?

sra

bingo_bango wrote:

I have a funny feeling that OP has clicked on 'Consolidate Library'. iTunes 7.0 asks if you want to do this during the initial setup, and would be really easy to do. This does move your music, and seems to be what has happened here.

Every time I've consolodated library, it has copied not moved. I've done if fairly recently as well (and here it says "Any song files that are located outside the iTunes Music folder remain in their original location; copies of them are placed in your iTunes Music folder.")

My current setup - with not enough room on my main drive for my music - stops me from being able to check in the most recent version

woo

System restore would just get rid of iTunes and not move the music back to it's original location.

When i have consolidated my library it has copied not moved too, did this with iTunes 7 yesterday.

bingo_bango

Not at home so can't see mine.
I do remember it flashed up a warning (also installed it in the last few days after a HDD failure) stating that it would move the files if I chose a particular option, but obviously it wasn't consolidation . Have to have another look later.

planetdannii

Bingo Bango I believe you are correct I did consolidate the library and I think is what has caused my problem.
The restore didn't help unfortunately.
It will take me hours to put it back to how it was, think i will just leave it....for a day when Im bored.lol

I think my itunes folder is also set to be my music folder..eeek
Thats where the prob is...;(

Rainy day mission I guess

Thanx all xxxx

bingo_bango

Obviously not 'consolidation' as per sra and woo, but I did see an option to do some type of 'import', which warned that doing so would remove the current foders, and make some new ones.
Mind you....iTunes is the least of my PC woes at the moment. :rolleyes: