Comments on: How to Easily Remove Duplicate Tracks on iTunes [Windows]

By: Courtam

Courtam — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 03:56:00 +0000

Thank you some much – this worked great for me I have a pretty large collection and it was kind of messed up. This was easy and no problems at all.

By: jtfburgess

jtfburgess — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 18:09:00 +0000

Thanks for this post. I searched around everywhere for a good solution, and this was the first one that worked perfectly. Good information, efficiently presented.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Mon, 31 May 2010 17:37:41 +0000

Hi Jim.

I was having the same problem as Yohanna and was able to sort it out, thanks to your excellent instructions. One note I wanted to share with anyone doing this- if you have a lot of files (songs) with generic/untitled file names (e.g., "track 1, track 2, etc.), it probably is not a good idea to look for duplicates by name. Luckily, I perused the info at the bottom of the Duplicate Music Files Finder and identified that many of my duplicate tracks had differient file paths (e.g., were from different albums). Just something to be aware of.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Mon, 31 May 2010 17:37:00 +0000

Hi Jim.

I was having the same problem as Yohanna and was able to sort it out, thanks to your excellent instructions. One note I wanted to share with anyone doing this- if you have a lot of files (songs) with generic/untitled file names (e.g., “track 1, track 2, etc.), it probably is not a good idea to look for duplicates by name. Luckily, I perused the info at the bottom of the Duplicate Music Files Finder and identified that many of my duplicate tracks had differient file paths (e.g., were from different albums). Just something to be aware of.

By: JimHenderson

JimHenderson — Tue, 04 May 2010 05:58:00 +0000

I’m so pleased I could help!

By: Julie

Julie — Tue, 04 May 2010 02:19:00 +0000

Thank you so much! I had isolated all the dead tracks into a smart playlist, but itunes would not let me delete them. They were mostly home movies from my camera that I had converted to “music videos.” I don’t know if this is why I couldn’t delete. In any case, I found your article, and it was so great to watch that playlist go from 16gb to empty. Thanks so much!

By: Jim Henderson

Jim Henderson — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 13:08:46 +0000

Superb! I’m glad it worked out for you.

By: Jim Henderson

Jim Henderson — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 13:06:20 +0000

Yep. Horses for courses then. Just as it should be.

By: Claus Valca

Claus Valca — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:57:15 +0000

@ Jim

Yep. No retention of play counts or song ratings.

However, I don’t really use those features much. Play counts are interesting when checking the “randomness” of the shuffle-play events and I have never bothered to rate songs.

I do know some folks who live for those things though and loss of that data would be a major bummer.

–Claus V.

By: Yohanna

Yohanna — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 22:25:59 +0000

Success!! Thanks Jim – works perfectly! I don’t know how I managed to stuff that up…

By: Jim Henderson

Jim Henderson — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 20:55:56 +0000

Okay, I think that’s where the problem is. You should be able to right-click on the link from this page, and choose *save link as…* if you are using Firefox, or *save target as…* in Internet Explorer. Save it as removedeadtracks.js, rather than .txt, and you should be fine.

Cheers

By: Yohanna

Yohanna — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 20:47:37 +0000

Hi Jim
I simply click on the link in your article, the first part of which shows up like this:

/*
File: RemoveDeadTracks.js

Version: 1.0

Right-clicking on the page doesn’t bring up a ‘Save as’ option, so I go to File > Save As, which brings up the Save box with RemoveDeadTracks written in the File Name box. In the ‘Save as type’ box it says Text File (*.txt) – but I can’t delete this. I then add ‘.js’ to the end of the file name. It then appears in my computer as ‘JScript Script File’ under the Properties, which it says opens with Microsoft (R) Windows Based Script Host. I double click on the file and I get the rude message. I’m stumped!

Thanks for your interest in helping me!!

By: Jim Henderson

Jim Henderson — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 10:01:00 +0000

Hi Yohanna.

Sorry to hear you’re having trouble.

I’d be checking the way it’s saved the file if I were you. It sounds as though you’ve lost a character at the beginning of the file or something. Any chance you could let me know how you went about saving it?

By: Yohanna

Yohanna — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 23:14:14 +0000

Hi Jim
Many thanks for this post, it’s very useful & user-friendly enough for a complete novice like me. I have however come unstuck at the RemoveDeadTracks.js phase – I can save it as a file alright but when I navigate to it and double-click it brings up a rude Windows Script Host blue box that tells me there’s been a ‘Line: 1, Char: 1, Error: Syntax Error, Code 800A03EA, Source: Microsoft JScript compilation error’. No doubt this is something that could be resolved by anyone with half a neuron of IT knowledge but unfortunately I’m not one of those people. Any ideas??

Thanks again.

By: Jim Henderson

Jim Henderson — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 10:26:31 +0000

Thanks Claus. Very comprehensive. Just one question… Did you lose your play counts and ratings by doing this?

Cheers

Jim