Occasionally music tracks can go 'missing'. This happens when the path to a file that MusicBee has stored in its database differs from the actual path on your computer. This is often caused by moving files outside of MusicBee, for example in Windows Explorer or another third party application, but can also occur when moving your library to a new PC and storing your music files in a different location (maybe when using a new username).
When MusicBee identifies a track as 'missing' it will set an 'exclamation mark' indicator to the left of the track. If you place your mouse pointer over this, then details of the issue will be displayed in a pop-up:

MusicBee provides a couple of tools to help in this situation:
Relink Music File PathsFound in
File > Library menu, this is a tool typically, but not solely, used when you have moved all your music files to a different folder or new drive. It will change all the links in the MusicBee database from 'folderpath-old' to 'folderpath-new'. This will ensure that all the music files and the playlists are updated with the new files paths.
- No files will be moved or renamed (only the links in the library database are updated).
- This will update every occurrence of 'folderpath-old' so should not be used when trying to relink individual files.
Example:
Your music files are currently stored in:
C:\Users\Username\Music\<Album Artist>\<Album>\<Filename>You buy a new drive (D:\) and move all your music files to
D:\Libraries\Music\<Album Artist>\<Album>\<Filename>Obviously when you restart MusicBee, it will not be able to find your music files. Relink Music File Paths can now be used to tell MusicBee where all the files are now located:

When you press the Update button, MusicBee will search through its database and change any occurrence of '
C:\Users\Username\' and replace it with '
D:\Libraries\'
(This is essentially a kind of 'search and replace' function.)
IMPORTANT - For this process to run successfully:- The old folder location ('map music file path from') must still exist on your system. (AS FROM VER 3.6.9065 THIS IS NO LONGER NECESSARY)
- The rest of your folder structure and filenames (i.e. the Music\<Album Artist>\<Album>\<Filename> part) must remain identical.
Relink Music File Paths is not a tool for locating individual files - to do this use:
Locate Missing FilesTo find individual missing tracks or albums you can use the
Locate Missing Files tool. This is found in the
Tools menu. This tool scans the tracks displayed in the main panel for missing files and displays them in this window:

There are then two available options:
1.
Start Auto-Match: This searches the PC for matching tracks based on filename, then on Track and Artist tags plus filesize. (Limited personal experience suggests that this rarely finds the required files.)
2.
Manual Location: This opens an explorer window allowing you to locate the track manually. It will then attempt to match other missing files in the same folder (single level only), again based on filename, then on Track and Artist tags plus filesize.
With both of these options a summary is displayed before any changes are made. Select
Proceed to apply the changes.
Preventing Files Going MissingObviously it is always better not to get to the point where you are trying to locate missing files. If you do need to keep moving files after adding to your MusicBee library then the best way is to use MusicBee tools to do the moving:
1. Use the
Computer node:
This can be found in the Navigator panel and acts in a similar(ish) way to using Windows Explorer.

2. Use the
Send To > Folder(Move) This tool is found in the right-click context menu. Here you can choose whether to send selected files to a specific folder or to an 'organised' folder based on tag data.
Both of these methods will ensure that MusicBee retains the correct folderpath information.