[rayz336]

How To Organize Your iTunes Library (Automatically)

Many of us have amassed very large iTunes libraries and the temptation is to just set it and forget. While this is an easy thing to do when using iTunes on one computer and not planning to move your library to another machine, life experience has shown us that sometimes things happen beyond our control and it is far easier to organize your iTunes library than you may believe. Below are a few steps to show you the proper settings to select to make sure that your library will remain organized and that iTunes will do the work for you in the future.

• Open iTunes
• If you have your menu bar showing, as I do, select 'Edit'


•Once your 'Edit' menu appears, select preferences and you will be greeted with this popup:



• We will be working with the 'Advanced' section of 'Preferences'
• You can specify a particular folder into which you'd like to organize your library. For my setup I have a folder on an external hard drive called
"iTunes" that I use to hold my library files.
• Make sure "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" and "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library" are selected and click 'OK'

Now that this part is complete, iTunes will manage the files you import in the future by itself and there will be no need to worry about those files becoming unorganized. Now to take care of the files that iTunes is already referencing and make sure that they are organized as well.

• To organize the existing files, simply click 'File' and click 'Library.' You will see the following menu and we
will be using the 'Organize Library' option


Once you see the menu below, check 'Consolidate files' and select 'OK' and iTunes will begin to create a copy of all of the files that your library references. (This
may take a few minutes depending on the size of your library)



Once this is completed, your iTunes library will be organized into one folder allowing you
to easily navigate its structure and copy the files within as needed.

[pr1nce]

Nice how to guide!

[rayz336]

Nice how to guide!

Thanks

[rdiddy_25]

Nicely done Ray

[Jaguarr40]

Way to go Ray... To the point!

[Elizabeth2]

Very nice guide Rayz! Thanks

[zdn1042]

Good work! Thank you for this.