Accidentally moved music out of iTunes in my iMac.

So I signed up for iTunes match and by mistake I dragged nearly all of my music from iTunes onto my desktop. I then dragged it to the Trash thinking there were copies still in the original files. Wrong. Now must of my music, we're talking more then 11k songs, in my trash folder. I now moved them back to a new folder on my desktop because I don't want to lose them. So what's the easiest way to get them back in iTunes? If I just add them back into iTunes, I will have duplicates of everything and have to spend hours deleting them. Same for downloading them using match since I can only do it one at a time after getting the error message on each one. I can use 'locate' and then it will find them album by album, but it's not keeping my stuff organized, only linking them and leaving the files in the new folder I just created. this means, although I have the 'Keep my iTunes folder Organized' box checked, it is not organized plus I have duplicates of the ones I've been downloading on my hard drive and no practical way of figuring out which i have 2 of, which is a big waste of space.



Please help!

Time Machine if you enabled it .

Thanks, I did try Time Machine, but it doesn't go back far enough.

Haugenbp said:

Thanks, I did try Time Machine, but it doesn't go back far enough.

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I don't understand TM backs up every hour unless you have had it off or disconnected.

I was having Time Machine issues due to my external drive being full at the same time, so it doesn't go back before the day this all happened. Believe me it's the first thing I tried. Perfect storm.

Here's one approach but use it with caution. Unless I have misunderstood your post this should work.. Check whatever folder you have chosen as your media folder in iTunes. Look there to see if the files are present. If they aren't try the following:

1. Launch iTunes and go to the Music section.
2. Select the list of songs in iTunes and delete them. this will delete the pointers to the files. If you are asked whether to delete the files choose to keep them.
3. Now choose "Add to Library” and add the files from the folder you were able to save.

If the files weren't in the media folder music section at the beginning there shouldn't be any duplicates.