Issues swapping over iTunes

I have done this many time with Windows computers. I have all my media on a separate HDD so that I can move it between computers. I just copy my iTunes directory from my Profile (with the library files) to the HDD when mounting it on a different PC, then copy the backed-up libraries from the HDD to the iTunes directory in the Profile of the new machine. It has worked flawlessly for years.

I tried the same thing on my new MBP and while it reads the library and has all the playlists and other settings correct, it will not find the files. I looked with a text editor at the iTunes Library.itl and iTunes Library.xml and they are pointing to the local profile iTunes directory instead of the directory on the external HDD.

Without doing a lot of find/replace via text editor, how can this be fixed?

Ok, so I got everything except ALL my apps to move over. All my apps have seemed to disappear from all media I had them stored on. iTunes has references for them, however they are nowhere to be found.

Not an emergency, yet. I say this because I have all the apps I need on my iPad. Well, all the ones I care about for right now. I am wondering if these will redownload if I do a check for updates? I have not run into this and with the money I have spent on apps, I dont want to lose them by syncing.

Sign into iTunes and re-download all your app purchases, no worries.

I have the apps downloaded. All 389 of them. By hand. One at a time.

My other issue came with a good percentage of my music folder being "not found." In fact, ALL 278 audiobooks (5798 files) I had are still on the drive, but not recognized as being there by iTunes. The directory location hasn't changed from before. However now they show the (!) beside them.

I have tried moving them to a new sub-directory and re-adding them to iTunes so it forces a copy and hopefully iTunes will recognize them. I really don't want to "Locate" these by hand - I would rather go through and re-rip them.

Of all the swap-over tasks I have gone through, this one has been the worst.