How To Delete Broken Links From iTunes

When you’ve been using iTunes for a while and perhaps had the odd machine crash, rebuild, virus then you’ll almost certainly have broken links in your iTunes library. Though the iPod simply skips the tracks (in fact I don’t think the empty stubs even transfer over) the broken links do mess up the play lists and searches.

I’m not sure why but Apple have not made it simple to find these broken files but it took a lot of searching to find a process to find and delete them.

My iTunes XML database recently got corrupted and it seemed I had lost all my many hours worth of song ratings. Luckily I was able tore-construct the database through an few month old backup and my iPod.In doing so, my entire iTunes library was duplicated with broken links. Since iTunes does not currently allow you to sort by the broken (’!’ icon), it’s a laborious, manual process to remove all these track listings.

That was until I found this ingenious process somewhere on the Apple forums:

1. Make a smart playlist called “All Files” with this rule: “Artist”is not “123456789″ (or any nonsense name that won’t be in your library).

2. Make a static playlist called “All Live Files”.

3. Make a smart playlist called “Missing Files” with these rules:Match all of the following rules, Playlist is “All Files”, Playlist is not “All Live Files”

4. Select all the files from “All Files” and drag them into “All Live Files”. The dead files marked (!) will not copy over.

5. “Missing Files” will contain all of your dead files. Select all and delete. Voila, a nice clean iTunes library.

I have these three playlists in their own folder. Whenever I gather more than a couple dead tracks for whatever reason, I delete all the tracks in “All Live Files” and repeat steps 4 and 5.

How to Delete a file from a playlist:

Windows: SHIFT + DEL
Mac: OPTION + DEL

There may be a slight delay at step 4, copying the files into the “All Live Files” play list, just be patient and don’t click anything else as the files are selected and copied.

I found the solution here –>http://www.paulmayne.org/archives/2007/11/how-to-remove-broken-or-dead-tracks-from-itunes

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(re-posted from here: http://daz71.livejournal.com/910701.html)