Went to play some music last night. Clicked on a song and an exclamation mark came up and said they couldn’t play the song as it couldn’t locate the original file. This happened on stuff I have bought from iTunes and stuff I have put on myself.
Some songs are fine though.
Help!

Where is the file located? On your machine or on a USB drive or network device?
Some useful into on a thread I started, though admittedly I still have issue with some files, but if I need them I just delete them and re-add them in again…

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/itunes-network-drive-issue

I’m assuming the files are on the computer.
Imagine you are explaining a computer to a red setter, that’s my computing skills.

LOL I like that, though I think anyone would struggle to explain it to a red setter, as they are stupid!
OK which adult (actually adult or child but obviously not you) loaded the music into iTune for you?
I suggest you go find that helpful person and ask them….

Or if you feeling brave, press the right hand side button on your mouse whilst the mouse is on is hovering over the offending file name. This should display a menu, one of the top options will be “get info”, select this with the left mouse button, a dialogue box will appear asking if you want to “locate” the file, press “no” and the info box will appear, at the bottom of this box in small writing will be the location the file should be at. Browse to this location to see if the file is still there or not, if it is still there, go back to itune and start this process again but instead press the “locate” button and browse to the file location & select the file… it should then be back in itunes.

I know that not exactly simple, but again if you show it to an adult or child who understand computers, they’ll know what to do

Even I should be able to follow those instructions! Ta.

Finally got round to having a look at this. I can find the info of where the song is located but cant paste that into the box. Do I have to write down and manually enter the 1000 plus songs it cant find?

you probably wont like this answer… this doesnt seem to happen since i got a mac but with pcs it does.

Its major hassle if you have created lots of playlists etc but if not its a quick fix. If you add your music to your library (by clicking file-add to library) then after you have done that, you have moved the music filed around in my computer (thats moving the actual file, not while in itunes) then itunes doesnt like that and you have to re-add the file/song to itunes. If it is a lot of music then its going to be easiest to delete it all and add it again from my experience. If it has been moved form your computer to an external hard drive or something, you need to move it back to your computer.

Before you delete it all and destroy your playlists if you have any, maybe wait a while and see if anyone else has a better solution?