Playing Around with iTunes
August 31, 2009 by Jason Bean
Filed under Computers
This evening, at the request of my wife, I’ve been playing around with iTunes on her computer. I’ve got to say I haven’t missed anything. I’m simply trying to get her library to update itself and remove references to songs that are no longer available to her on our home network.
The songs aren’t available because the computer they were stored on is now offline and I’m not sure when it will be getting fixed again. You’d think there would be an easy way to get this done. If there is, I haven’t found it. That’s one of the reasons I really do not like iTunes and haven’t missed it not being on my own computer.
After not finding anything I did a quick Google search and came across this post where people other than me seem to be wanting to accomplish the same thing and can’t very easily.
That post didn’t really give me the answer either.
Here’s what I ended up doing. I selected every file in the iTunes library and selected “Delete”. This prompted me with a warning about the fact that I’d also be removing all of these songs from any iPod or iPhone that was also synch’d to the computer.
I was then prompted on whether or not I wanted to send all the music files to the Recycle Bin or leave them in the iTunes folder. I chose to leave them in the folder. After the library was shown as empty I then added the same iTunes folder back to the library.
It the refreshed everything in the library and only showed those songs that were actually available. Bingo! Now, wouldn’t a “Refresh” button have been much more helpful? As someone in the forum post mentioned earlier, yes it would have, but Apple just wants us to “Think Different”.
