replace itunes from time machine

just got an iphone, first time and the syncing w/imac has gone wrong.....separated iphone from mac no more sync, direct or wifi......sync has screwed up itunes and must revert back to previous library from time machine...upgraded itunes and safari as per apple and worried if replacing itunes will create problems due to new upgrade ...... (new phone works well - good sound great camera/video, nice graphics.......however with i cloud, syncing, poor battery performance and a confounding amount of comical apps and tweeks its been stripped down to phone, media center and camera ).....thanks for help

Hi and welcome.

Your iTunes library is normally to be found at Macintosh HD > Users > YourName > Music > iTunes

It might differ if you've changed things in the past, but that's the first place to look.

Taking your question at face value: if you want to go back in time and replace the entire library and its contents, playlists etc from Time Machine, this is what you do -

1. Open Finder and navigate to your iTunes Library. Keep that Window open.

2. Click on the Time Machine icon in the top menu bar - from the drop down, choose "Enter Time Machine" (NB DO NOT try to open Time Machine from Finder).

3. When you Enter Time Machine, it will, or should, display the Window you had left open in step 1.**

4. On your right side, will be a timeline. Select a date from the timeline when you are sure that iTunes was functioning normally; by clicking on it. Wait - I mean wait.

5. After a few seconds, it will have gone back to that date and the window (from step 1) should be displayed.**

6. Click on the iTunes library to highlight it.

7. At the bottom of your screen, you have 2 choices "Restore" or "Cancel" (in older versions, Restore was on the left side, I think, and cancel on the right). Choose restore. Wait, again wait. When the restore is done, it may ask you if you want to keep both versions or replace.

You should choose Replace.

Then, when that is done, quit out of Time Machine.

** If for any reason, the original window from step 1, is not showing, then navigate to your iTunes Library as you did before.


Now that deals with your question as stated; but once you've restored things, there is the question of why it got screwed up in the first place. We want to avoid that, so come back to us before you start syncing things, please.

Ian

Please clarify your question a bit. Syncing is still working for me via iTunes though some other functions have changed a bit recently.

Slydude said:

Please clarify your question a bit. Syncing is still working for me via
iTunes though some other functions have changed a bit recently.

Click to expand...

got iphone> transfer media from itunes , books/music using sync> discover mac and iphone are now one,( mail, downloads, mac app updates etc.) itunes update 2 days ago> problems begin, duplicate, triple, quadruple entries of existing content show up in audiobooks ( cannot separate, deleting one does all, content hijacking other audiobooks if they are open during "info" opening) having to open twice for art in music/books to load>unsync, disconnect wifi> itunes still in disarray now have to replace from time machine and not use sync must find another method to download from mac to phone.......how does one check that sync is no longer in effect?

Ian,
itune refuses to accept backup...it reverts to the first opening after the update which is chaos, multiple entries of the same books .....the odd thing is that when this first happened i went through and trashed the audiobooks that were duplicated...... there has been no time machine back up since this problem started ...the only place this could be coming from is icloud, have looked for termination for el capitan but the directions i get do not lead to anything but the i cloud icon in preferences, there a sign in and nothing else....easy find found thousands of listings when icloud was entered i dont remember joining.....perhaps with the sync debacle it happened ......how do i quit and go back to normal.....will going to sierra fix this and keep icloud out...........can i pull my credit card from apple so they refuse access........help

have reinstalled itunes twice with 2 different versions 12.7 and 12.6 both revert to the multiple duplicate files ...dosent look like icloud anymore perhaps a corrupted file ??? but where ?

I'm a bit confused at the moment so bear with me. I understand that you are getting duplicate entries I'm not 100% sure why it is happening. I've had a similar problem before that was not due to iClould but a mixup in a different setting. I'll see if I can find the directions that I used. The explanation of why it happened might be useful. Here are a couple of things to check that might give us an idea where the issue is starting:

1. When you are looking at your library in a view that shows the cover art, do any of the duplicated covers have a little cloud icon on them. If so that would mean that iTunes is showing you both the "regular" version on your hard drive and the version in the cloud.
2. If you use Finder and open the folder that actually contains your music files are you seeing duplicate files?

no clouds, media/music via finder is in sequence and in tact... using external ssd (imac hd is for storage and additional external hd for time machine ) getting itunes duplicates only in audiobooks however both are requiring that i toggle between them to get the cover art and the book art to load.... installed different app, imusic, in place of itunes, got duplicating albums, ( imusic dosent do audiobooks ) uninstalled it......am running late 2015-21.5 imac-2.8 gHz-el capitan

Denniscampbell, please don't take this observation the wrong way, but proper punctuation and sentences would help me understand what you are trying to say. That observation may apply to others as well. Thanks.

denniscampbell said:

Ian,
itune refuses to accept backup...it reverts to the first opening after the update which is chaos, multiple entries of the same books .....the odd thing is that when this first happened i went through and trashed the audiobooks that were duplicated...... there has been no time machine back up since this problem started ...the only place this could be coming from is icloud, have looked for termination for el capitan but the directions i get do not lead to anything but the i cloud icon in preferences, there a sign in and nothing else....easy find found thousands of listings when icloud was entered i dont remember joining.....perhaps with the sync debacle it happened ......how do i quit and go back to normal.....will going to sierra fix this and keep icloud out...........can i pull my credit card from apple so they refuse access........help

Click to expand...

I, like others, am slightly confused about what the problem really is.

I gave you detailed info on how to restore your iTunes from a Time Machine backup. That is a proven and foolproof way of replacing a faulty library with one which was working perfectly in the past.

So, did you follow this suggestion? If yes, was there a problem? If no, then I can quite understand how your difficulties persist.

Also, Sly made a great point. Are you confusing what is on your Mac with songs that are stored in the cloud?

Maybe, we could start again and ask how your iTunes is set up.

I presume that in iTunes, Preferences, you have a set up like this:





Can we start from here?

Ian

MacInWin said:

Denniscampbell, please don't take this observation the wrong way, but proper punctuation and sentences would help me understand what you are trying to say. That observation may apply to others as well. Thanks.

Click to expand...

Yup, it sure does and a very understated post thanks Jake, and basically why I didn't even try to understand or even reply. Hard to do when one doesn't even understand what the problem actually is.

Maybe start again or from Ian's last post.





- Patrick
======

IWT said:

I, like others, am slightly confused about what the problem really is.

I gave you detailed info on how to restore your iTunes from a Time Machine backup. That is a proven and foolproof way of replacing a faulty library with one which was working perfectly in the past.

So, did you follow this suggestion? If yes, was there a problem? If no, then I can quite understand how your difficulties persist.

Also, Sly made a great point. Are you confusing what is on your Mac with songs that are stored in the cloud?

Maybe, we could start again and ask how your iTunes is set up.

I presume that in iTunes, Preferences, you have a set up like this:

View attachment 28255

View attachment 28256

Can we start from here?

Ian

Click to expand...

Agreed on the difficulty figuring out exactly what the problem is. I'm wondering if the OP did the restore from an iTunes backup that was after the problem started which would result in the issues still being there.

OP do you have an earlier back up in Time Machine to try reverting to?

please excuse confusion..........
Itunes set up is correct and the attempted backup was pre incident, have isolated computer from icloud and iphone and backup rejection persists..... thank you for the help

another attempt to be clear......
12.7 itunes, 10.11 el capitan, and iphone se.
Synced to load media to phone. While synced, itunes updated to 12.7 and duplicated several books in audiobooks, as many as 4-5 times, turned off sync/wifi for mac, icloud and phone. Itunes refuses to revert back to previous format, have tried time machine back up, uninstalled / reinstalled itunes 12.6, 12.7, the app continues with multiple books
( removing one book removes all duplicates of that book) Downloading new books repeats duplication. Music files dont duplicate, however to get artwork to load for music and books, the app must be toggled between both.....