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OS 10.6.8 I have 2 folders in itunes which I would like to open so as to create individual files. Also, I trashed a couple of hundred itunes and edited quite alot to have the various artists listed under their own name. I ran D/W and then backed up my HD. I opened up itunes and most of the files were mixed up even more than before. I went into my backup and in itunes, there was no difference. Is there a way of solving my 2 problems? jaybass

I don't really follow what your problems are, but you may find something helpful at Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes .

If your intent is to merge two existing music folders, iTunes can do that with relative ease. There are two different but related entities, the iTunes Library and the tune files. Although it is generally preferable for management purposes the tune files do not have to be in the same folder, or even on the same drive to be included in the iTunes Library. The organization of the Library is independent of the organization of files in the various folders.

You will find an easy step-by-step discussion of how to combine or merge two iTunes Libraries and at the same time into a single iTunes Media folder here. If you would prefer to keep the tunes in multiple folders and/or locations do NOT check the option to consolidate files.

As to the organization within the Library itself, that can become quite difficult. Everything has to be letter perfect, the artist name, the album name, the album artist, composer, etc., etc. I have found those are not always consistent even in the same downloaded album, which can result in an album appearing multiple times in the Library.

My problem was that for some unknown reason, my itunes were all mixed up after backing up. I did some googling and find a very simple solution i.e. open itunes and click 'sort artist' on the right hand side of itunes and that returned my itunes to alphabetical order again. What a relief. I should have mentioned alphabetical order and then someone would have directed me to the solution. Thanks joe and artie. jaybass

don't use Finder to sort your iTunes music. I've seem people do this with their iTunes and iPhoto and it never ends well.

Both use a database to keep track of this information. When you move or rename a track using iTunes, it does the change in Finder AND updates the database. But when you move a file using Finder, it doesn't update the database, and iTunes/iPhoto lose track of it.

Do these changes in iTunes. If you've already done them, restore from backup and use iTunes. This is difficult to fix manually.

In iPhoto, this usually causes the photos to look normal at the start, but when you click on a (cached!) thumbnail, it suddenly changes to a big grey "?". The more you click, the more grey "?"s you get, and may have seemingly lost quite a few of your pictures. iTunes kinda does the same thing, greying out tracks when clicked on. (or sometimes before)

I had to fix what started as an 860,000 track iTunes library that someone did this to.... that was quite a job. (the flat text file listing the tracks was 56MB!)

I have used file/get info/ and typed in the name of the artist in order to have that particular artists files come together. I didn't erase anything and I have opened itunes several times since and everything is in alphabetical order. I'll bear mind what you said but at the moment, I'll wait and see. Thanks Virtual1. jaybass.