playlists not locating songs

[Henrycjones318]

all of the songs in my library have been located and are working fine but all of the songs in my playlists arent working at all. every song has no title, time, album, or any info at all and it has the red exclamation icon next to it. but when i click where the song should be it pulls up the the name of the song and artist and asks if i would like to locate it. so i know the song is there! when i go to tools and locate it does nothing. i could locate them all 1 by 1 but that would take ages... what am i missiing.....

[phred]

Hover over the exclamation icon and tell us what it says.

[Henrycjones318]

it says " file__ is missing"

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

In the "Tools" sub-menu, there is a "Locate Missing Files..." option.
I'm not sure if it will work on playlists, but it's worth a try.

[Henrycjones318]

When I go to locate missing files musicbee says it's scanning E for files. All my files are in F and when I go to file - scan folders for new files I have selected F. And all the music in my library is located. But in tools - locate missing files it says it's searching through E and I don't see where I can change that. Thank you

[Henrycjones318]

I figured out to change where musicbee is locating the missing songs from. But it still doesn't work. Every song in every Playlist is missing

[MotleyG]

Where the storage locations for these songs moved at some point? If the playlists are using an absolute reference (I.e. each line has the actual drive path like E:\user\Music but you have since moved these files to your F drive, they won’t be found. You can edit the playlists in a text editor quickly using Find/Replace from the old path to the new one.

[Henrycjones318]

Yes I moved the files to a new external hardrive. How do I use the text editor?

[MotleyG]

Yes I moved the files to a new external hardrive. How do I use the text editor?

Can you paste a couple lines from your playlist file here, as well as the path for your new storage location?

[Henrycjones318]

I'm not sure I understand. The path for the new storage location is One Touch (F:)  and when I hover over one of the missing tracks in a playlist it says "File 'F:/__' is missing.

Also I don't have internet where I live so I'm  typing on my phone and using muaic bee on my computer. Where I typed __' is missing it does say the song name and artist just how I have it saved on my hardrive. It's just really long to type. Since I can't copy and paste...

[MotleyG]

I'm not sure I understand. The path for the new storage location is One Touch (F:)  and when I hover over one of the missing tracks in a playlist it says "File 'F:/__' is missing.

Also I don't have internet where I live so I'm  typing on my phone and using muaic bee on my computer. Where I typed __' is missing it does say the song name and artist just how I have it saved on my hardrive. It's just really long to type. Since I can't copy and paste...

That makes it hard to give you specific answers to support you. A playlist is just a text file, with each line pointing to the path for each file, in the order your playlist was originally built.

When you moved the storage location of your music, the playlist directions no longer point to where those files are. So any player using that playlist has no idea where to look.

If you open your playlist file using something like Notepad or Wordpad, you will see each line with the first part that was the old location. Use the Find  feature and enter that part of the path (easiest if you copy/paste from one of the files) then add the Replace info for the new file path. Choose Replace All and save the playlist.

Now your player should be able to find those tracks again.

[Henrycjones318]

When I open a Playlist in notepad it comes up as "   -   C:/Users/Henry/music/musicbee/ 0 false. -2  ÿÿÿÿ     ÿÿÿÿ-
 yF:/Bela Fleck & the flecktones" and it just goes on after that listing every song in the Playlist. I see the find feature but don't see where I can replace the location. And I don't know if I'm copying the right part of all that

[sveakul]

A playlist is just a text file

Well, unless it is in proprietary *.mbp format, in which case it is binary.  But if that is the case, you can export the existing ones as .m3u text files, edit them with the excellent instructions supplied by MotleyG, then re-import them back into MusicBee.

Added edit for Henrycjones318:  based on your sample in your last post your playlist(s) is indeed in mbp binary format and to be directly edited will need to be first exported as .m3u/8 as I have mentioned.

[MotleyG]

Thanks @sveakul for this addition, I didn’t think to consider it could be a MusicBee playlist. There wasn’t any indication from the earlier posts and I didn’t ask.

The premise remains though for any playlist with absolute paths. If you move the files, the playlist will fail for those tracks. So corrections will need to be made if you make a significant change like moving your entire library to an new drive and/or folder structure.

[phred]

If you move the files, the playlist will fail for those tracks. So corrections will need to be made if you make a significant change like moving your entire library to an new drive and/or folder structure.

If you move the files within MB, i.e. using the computer node, the paths in the playlists will be updated. Moving files outside of MB is just about always going to cause trouble.