All iTunes music given same name

I was speaking to a friend who has had an iMac for about 4 months and said that all her iTunes music had been given the same name so making it impossible to identify.

I asked her if she had any backups but she had none.

I advised her to get one or better still two external hard drives to use as Time Machines.

Meanwhile is there a possible explanation/solution?

Only possible explanation I can see is that she somehow had all of her music highlighted (instead of only one), did a right click - Get Info and renamed thinking she was renaming only one title.

bobtomay said:

Only possible explanation I can see is that she somehow had all of her music highlighted (instead of only one), did a right click - Get Info and renamed thinking she was renaming only one title.

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That sounds likely but presumably means that there is no remedy.

If the tags have been changed, there's no way to undo it unless you resort to a backup (which you note isn't available).

Only remedy without a backup that I'm aware of is going to be manually opening and renaming each one.

If she didn't change Album, artist, track #, etc. at the same time, could be doable.

Lady has a backup to take from her iPad

bobtomay said:

Only remedy without a backup that I'm aware of is going to be manually opening and renaming each one.

If she didn't change Album, artist, track #, etc. at the same time, could be doable.

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It's not as bad as I thought. The lady has an iPad which still has the original iTunes. I suggested that, as her iMac is still under warranty, she should call the Apple helpline to get help with transferring from the iPad to her iMac; otherwise she could end up synching the iPad to conform with the iMac.

Thanks for your help.

Firstly, do a time machine backup of your Mac as it stands now.

Once done, I'd grab yourself a copy of iExplorer

Fully quit iTunes
In Finder rename the iTunes media folder as something like mediaold
Use iExplorer to copy you music into a temp folder on the desktop - lets call it recoveredmusic
Open iTunes - check preferences say to let iTunes manage music and to copy files into the library
In iTunes go to File - Add to library and point it to the recoveredmusic folder.
Let iTunes import all the music.

If you have other files like TV, Movies etc. go back to Add to library and point it at the relevant folders in the mediaold folder to re-import them.

Once done check that the album/song count etc match between what's on the iPad and what's in iTunes.

Once you're happy you have everything you want in iTunes you can delete the recoveredmusic folder and the mediaold folder

Once done, I'd grab yourself a copy of iExplorer

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Looks like a great app but IMO a bit overpriced at $34.99. Other apps which can do the same thing generally sell for around $20. (Senuti)

chscag said:

Looks like a great app but IMO a bit overpriced at $34.99. Other apps which can do the same thing generally sell for around $20. (Senuti)

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I didn't know Senuti was still going. But yes that would do the trick for a cheaper price for music recovery.

I got iExplorer for rescuing various data and settings (pre-iCloud) when I was working away from my iTunes backups. It was invaluable, but it is a little pricey for one-off use.