Restoring MB Library on new w10 Installation

[^funky]

Hello all,

This week I unfortunately had to reinstall w10 and all of it's programs, of course, including MusicBee. Upon re-installment I've followed the intructions from the wiki. So I unstalled MB, copied files from the Appdata Folder and once I opened I locate my old .mbl file. Then everything looks the same, yet the music file folder is different.

You see I have all my music in the folder D:\Music\Music Library and the .mbl file in D:\Music\MusicBee. But when I select the .mbl file it puts all music files from D:\Music in my library, not only the subfolder "Music Library." This was probably the case before I had to reinstall, and I guess I just removed all the other files manually at some point, but to do this again would be a pain. I'm sure there is some easy way to fix this, but after half a dozen tries I could use  some help.

Cheers

[^funky]

Well it seems I could only include the "Music Library" folder through Preferences> Library> monitored folders> Choose Folders. Though I will have to manually relocate all the duplicate files from this folder. Then I can automatically remove the rest via the little pop up window you get upon starting up asking if you want to remove all not found items. Bit of hassle but I guess it works out.

Edit: Actually no, it still includes files outside of my music library folder This feels very messy.

[sveakul]

Edit: Actually no, it still includes files outside of my music library folder This feels very messy.

Your actual music files don't need to be in the same physical location to be in the MusicBee library;  the library is a database file that contains links to wherever the files actually reside that you have told MB to add to the library.  It also contains all the related info about the file tags, etc.

[^funky]

Your actual music files don't need to be in the same physical location to be in the MusicBee library;  the library is a database file that contains links to wherever the files actually reside that you have told MB to add to the library.  It also contains all the related info about the file tags, etc.

Yeah I understand that it is possible, it is how I used to have it. Yet I'm not sure how to accomplish this when restoring MB. Right now I can't seem to tell the library database file to only include one folder containing all my music files "D:\Music\Music Library."  when I relocate the library database file it includes music files from other folders aswell. Even ones I temporarily moved to D:\Videos. That is what I meant by messy.

My main question is: how do I tell MusicBee to include all the music files from "D:\Music\Music Library" inside Musicbee and nothing else?

[sveakul]

The easiest way to do it would be to just create another library (File->Library->Create New Library) pointed at only the D:\Music\Music Library folder, and then delete the old library.  I'm assuming the actual music files reside in that folder.  Before you do that, be sure you change any monitoring options you have enabled to point at just that folder.  Of course, as with all major operations, be sure you back everything up first.

[^funky]

I really want to keep all metadata so that is not really an option. I guess I will have to remove the unwanted files form MB manually. If there is no easy way to point my database library to only that folder instead of what it used to be.

[psychoadept]

You can add Path as a field to the main panel. Sort by Path and remove everything that's not in the folder you want to include (just select them all at once).

[^funky]

Well, I once again tried reinstalling & restoring. And somehow it all works now. No unwanted files in my library, and all settings like I used to have them. I only had to fix all my duplicates. I'm not sure what I did different, but I'm happy.

Cheer for the suggestion psychoadept, was about to use that method to remove the unwanted files, would've been a great help.