RELOCATE MISSING FILES IN PLAYLIST without having to locate the ONE BY ONE?

[shlind]

Is there a way to find missing files in a playlist without having to locate them one by one? (I have changed location for the files).

Before I had all my files spread in various subfolders, but now I have changed it to have all files in one main folder.

Is there a way to point all files in the playlists to look at that particular folder to find the files without having to locate each file one by one?

The tool “Find missing files” looks up missing files in the library with some level of automatisation - but to find missing files in a play list it seems that I am forced to find them one by one!

[Mayibongwe]

Hi there,

I haven't gone and had a look at how MusicBee behaves on my side for the above scenario, but:

If those missing tracks have been found and located in the main library, I don't understand how MB would still deem them "missing" in the playlists.
Unless it's a bug or those tracks in the playlist were previously dragged and dropped from outside MB and not necessary sourced from the existing ones in the library.

What MusicBee version are you using?
I'm sure you've restarted and rescanned MB since posting this - are the tracks still marked as missing?
And it goes without saying that next time, if you wanna move any files, do it within MB itself so that it knows the new location (File Organizer).

[islandbuilder]

Okay same issue here. I have just started using MB and I'm kicking myself for not finding it sooner because of how amazingly practical and useful it is. However..

I just completed pulling in all my music and playlists with the library auto-organize enabled. So each file now lives in Music Bee's designated folder. I started seeing some files with the exclamation mark and when clicked on they couldn't play. A notification pops up saying the "file couldn't be located, would you like to locate?" When I click yes it took me exactly to where the file was in MusicBee's file tree.

Instead of going through one by one for this, I read in the forums that to solve this issue I could go File>Library>Re-link music file paths.. and remind the system where the files reside by directing the path to MusicBee>Music.

This resulted in a all files now having the exclamation of doom. I reminded myself to breathe, and began to inspect the location of my music files. Indeed they are in the Musicbee>Music folder.

I then find the "locate missing file" function. While it had many of the missing files with the correct "located file name", there are lots that don't have this information and therefore do not auto-match and cannot be recovered. This has unfortunately left many of my playlists either partially or fully missing.

Should I have redirected the "re-link path" of the file to just "MusicBee" so it encompasses the playlist folder?

@Shlind did you find a solution to recovering your playlists?

[islandbuilder]

The "Import playlist" feature is not identifying the .mbp playlist files stored in MusicBee folder. They don't show up at all -  could I convert the file type to recover the playlists?

[islandbuilder]

Playlist contents are all entirely missing.  Screenshot to demonstrate presence of playlists, confirmation of tracks' missing information, as well as retrievability from MusicBee>Music folder individually.

"Locate missing files" attempts are unsuccessful. Any suggestions to solutions would be massively appreciated.

https://ibb.co/mCBm0fq
https://ibb.co/PW5hnHK

[boroda]

on the 1st screenshot the path to the music file contains part: \music\musicbee\musicbee\music\musicbee\music\

suggest that you have incorrectly used "Re-link music file paths" command.

try to relink files again, entering "c:\users\conta\music\musicbee\musicbee\music\musicbee\music\" in the "from" path and "c:\users\conta\music\" in the "to" part. it's if the root of your music files is "c:\users\conta\music\" at this moment.

[islandbuilder]

Good catch, I've corrected the redundancy in the "from" path. I don't know how it got like that but when corrected it leaves some files still missing. As you can see in the screenshots, it knows exactly where it should be sourcing those file from... "c:\users\conta\music\musicbee\music"

https://ibb.co/Y0SWCc7
https://ibb.co/X4rDn2m
https://ibb.co/pn66tPK

However it's not automatically picking them up - and there's playlists with most files missing in this way.

https://ibb.co/cTRcDLz
https://ibb.co/GCH6FZm
https://ibb.co/Y3YHtmj

As you can see, the source file is located where it should be according to the file path notification however for some reason it's not being recognized. I've used the "Scan folder for new files" without success. Any additional suggestions or pointers towards what I'm overlooking would be much appreciated. Thanks.

[tangotonyb]

i've had the same happen to me where I moved the library folder. Can't remember exactly what I did that caused playlists and file locations to get out of sync, but I ended up with No missing music files in the LIBRARY, but most of my playlists were screwed up.

You should be able to fix by dragging all the playlists into a single playlist folder and then selecting this folder. Then use "Relocate Missing files" and fix the location for one file in the list. MusicBee should automatically check that folder for all other missing files as well.

[islandbuilder]

I created a playlist with all music from all playlists and tried to Locate missing files however none of them successfully locate a match. Even after I've manually located a few files successfully.

https://ibb.co/1fTKzjc

The files exist in the Library as shown below but many are still missing in the playlist.

https://ibb.co/mq9dQ1W
https://ibb.co/3zvBt3m

[boroda]

i see "_1" filename postfix (before file extension) on this screenshot:

https://ibb.co/Y0SWCc7

usually this happens when you add a file, which already exists in the library, and this new file becomes a duplicate. probably, later, you have deleted duplicated files from disk, but not from playlists.

now, about this screenshot:

https://ibb.co/2dbBVpj

do not try to delete duplicates, which physically don't exist. use "replace with reference to the kept file" option. BUT! be careful to mark as duplicate to be replaced the files, which don't exist, keeping the files, which exist. i don't know if this can be automated.

and replace database/playlists links to not existing duplicates by the links to existing files (using the same duplicate manager) for the case from 1st screenshot in this post (for files with filename ending with "_1").

if these files don't exist in the library, but only exist in playlists, then change mb settings to store playlists as .m3u files (prefs> library> playlists> library playlists> change MBP to M3U).  .m3u is plain text format, which can be opened, e.g. in notepad++, or just in windows notepad). remove "_1" form filenames in playlists using notepad(++).

------------

NOTE FOR ANY FILE OPERATIONS ON THE TRACKS IN THE FUTURE:

do all file operations on tracks contained in the library/playlists only using MB (either use "tools> organize files" menu item or use "computer" node in the left navigator panel for manual file moving).

[islandbuilder]

@boroda Thanks for your speedy response. I got ahead of myself before I saw your response and via the music library I used function "Show dead links" and removed these versions.

I can still see the missing files when I use the same "show dead links" function on my playlist containing all music. It knows where to locate it but because of the difference of the "_1" it needs me to manually select the file. Did I make a grave mistake deleting the duplicates forcing me to recover all the lost playlist items manually? Could I somehow repopulate the playlists from "c:\users\conta\music\musicbee\playlist" or were those files likely altered by the changes made?

Praying for a quicker solution but I realize my trigger happy mouse clicking finger might have doomed me on this one.

Thanks for your time and consideration on the matter.

[boroda]

...or were those files likely altered by the changes made?

i don't know, but try what i've advised in my previous post.

I can still see the missing files when I use the same "show dead links" function on my playlist containing all music. It knows where to locate it but because of the difference of the "_1" it needs me to manually select the file ... Could I somehow repopulate the playlists from "c:\users\conta\music\musicbee\playlist"?

i've answered what you can try:

...and replace database/playlists links to not existing duplicates by the links to existing files ... for the case from 1st screenshot in this post (for files with filename ending with "_1").

if these files don't exist in the library, but only exist in playlists, then change mb settings to store playlists as .m3u files (prefs> library> playlists> library playlists> change MBP to M3U).  .m3u is plain text format, which can be opened, e.g. in notepad++, or just in windows notepad). remove "_1" (search & replace) from filenames in playlists using notepad(++) notepad or notepad++.

P.S. you will be able to change library playlists format back to (more rich) MBP later, when all playlists are fixed.