Way to delete duplicates in Itunes?

[kenneth]

like the title says how do you delete your duplicates in your itunes? i just updated to 8.0 and it copied all of my files again. so now i have alot of doubles.

[jptolife]

File -> Show duplicates should make it easier for you. Good luck.

[kenneth]

haha well yea thats what i have been doing for the past hour.

[jptolife]

haha ok, yeah I don't think there is an "Erase all duplicates" button somewhere. Will have to keep doing it that way. Sorry!

[kenneth]

Crap!!!!

[Youngbinks]

As far as I know what you've been doing is the only option. I've had this happen a few times and it is certainly annoying.

[psylichon]

This is why I don't let iTunes copy my music files on import. I like to manage my own files.

[Swagger]

Actually there is a way to delete all duplicates at once. File>Show Duplicates, when the duplicate screen comes up. Highlight (on Mac= Ctrl+click drag cursor until all songs turn blue, Windows= Left click and drag cursor down page until all songs turn blue, then right click on blue area, in drop down box click delete. Another pop up will appear asking if you want to delete or keep original file, click delete original file (this will only delete the copies you will still be left with one file, which is in your music library). All duplicates will then be deleted..Mark

[SmartAlx]

But that will remove EVERY song that is said to be a duplicate from your library. The original AND the duplicate. You have to look at each song to see if you want it because some of the filenames in the folders will be like:

La Agarro Bajando 1.mp3
while in the same folder you have a file:
La Agarro Bajando.mp3

You probably want to delete the one with the "1" and keep the other one.


This is why I hate Steve Jobs for not having a filename column. It's VERY usable for getting rid of these things. Instead we have to go through a real painful job to remove these files.

If you have to manage your library a lot then i would suggest that you purchase BeaTunes. It's an amazing piece of software that helps you keep your library organized. It will identify tracks, identify tempo (with maybe 80%-90% accuracy), and analyze your library and identify problems like duplicates, songs with similar names, artists with similar names, Songs of the same album with different dates or artists or genres, etc.

But if you don't want to buy a program, you can get rid of songs with "1" in the filename yourself.

My method is to go outside of iTunes. Search for "1" in the filename and delete them from your computer. iTunes will put an ! in front of the song and that will make it easier to identify the songs with 1 in the title.

But I just came up with a new idea. I haven't tested it though but it should prove much easier since you can't delete songs from your library from inside a playlist. What we're going to do is add "dup" to the genre names so we can sort them in the music list, not a playlist. If you have a lot of genres then this method might not be the easiest method for you, but who knows, depending on how many songs you have, it still might be easier than highlighting each song individually. If you are a DJ, then I would definitely suggest this method to start getting rid of duplicates. But if you are DJ, you might have other tools (Like BeaTunes at least) to help get rid of duplicates.

1. First we have to prepare our songs. Sort your duplicate list by genre.
2. Highlight the list of duplicates in each genre, right click, and select "Get Info."
3. Add "dup" to the beginning of the genre name. (We'll be deleting that later on.)
4. Repeat for every genre.
   
   .
5. Highlight every song on your duplicate playlist.
6. File->Create Playlist from Selection. Name it "duplicates-all."
   
   .
7. Go to explorer (in Windows) and search for "*1 .mp3"
8. You might end up losing some songs if you delete. So for now move them to a temporary folder called "duplicates" until you make sure the songs are deleteable.
9. You should go ahead and search for "* 2.mp3" and "* 3.mp3" on up to say 5 or so, just to be thorough. Once we start changing the library we can't go back. In fact, try to search for every possible way that might identify a duplicate. For example you might want to search for "copy of" in the filename. You also need to check other file extensions like m4a and m4r. You only want to go through this process once.
   
   .
10. Return to iTunes and highlight all of the songs in a genre.
11. Right click and select "Get Info." Remove "dup" from the genre name.
12. Hit OK and look at your list of duplicates. Now (about) half of the songs in that genre will have an exclamation point next to it.
13. Repeat for each genre.
    
    .
14. Now every song with "dup" in the genre name is one of those songs with "1" in the filename. Can you delete it? Maybe not, so you should check to see if every song with a "1" in the filename is a dup. We can do this with a playlist.
    
    .
15. File->New Smart Playlist.
16. First line should be [genre] [contains] [dup]
17. Second line should be [playlist] [is not] ["duplicates-all"]
    
    .
18. All of the songs in this list are NOT duplicates, but their filenames are screwy. The files are also in the duplicates folder. You'll need to use this list to find the songs and fix these filenames. So name the playlist "screwy filenames"
19. You are going to have to go down this list and find each song in the folder you created earlier and put them in a new folder called "add back to library." (This is a good reason to not go and willy-nilly delete duplicates. You might be removing songs with clean filenames and keep songs with screwy filenames.)
    
    Don't add these songs back to the iTunes library yet. They still have "dup" in the genre title!
    
    .
20. Now we know that all of the files in the duplicate folder that we created earlier are in fact duplicates and we can safely delete the folder. You might want to keep the folder for awhile though just in case.
    
    .
21. Now go to the music list, and delete every song in each genre with dup in the title from the library.
22. Now we shouldn't have any genres with dup in the title. But we will in a second because we are going to put our missing songs back into the library.
    
    .
23. Go to your "add back to library" folder.
24. *optional* Fix the screwy filenames if you are so inclined. I would.
25. Move the good songs BACK to where they belong. (If you manage your folder yourself, you'll have to put the files back where you moved them yourself and add them to the iTunes library manually. If you allow iTunes to keep your iTunes folder organized and you allow it to copy to the folder then you should just have to double click on the mp3.)
26. Go back to your music list in iTunes. Select each genre with dup in the name. Highlight all songs. Select "get info" and get rid of the dup in the name.
27. repeat for each dup genre.
    
    .
28. You might (probably) still have duplicates though. I can't help you there. You'll have to check those files manually, unless you can find a common pattern you can search for. If there is a pattern then you'll want to include those files in the duplicates folder before you start this entire process.

By the way "Show Duplicates" has been in iTunes for quite awhile. Ever since I started to put music on my iPhone anyway.

[santoz642]

If you use Windows, try iDeduper
http://www.ideduper.com