itunes library & folder problem

hi there --

hope one of you can help out!

a few months ago i had a user issue with my powerbook G4 (osx 10.3.9) -- i accidentally created a new user, which caused a host of problems, tho none major, thankfully. i had to reimport my itunes library (i'm using itunes 6) in order to get it to open in my new user. i finally went to the mac store yesterday to pare things back down to a single user so i was no longer having to open various things from different places. the guy there said that my computer was defaulting to User #2, rather than its initial User #1, and he recommended moving everything from #1 to #2, then just deleting User #1.

this seemed to go okay, but when i opened itunes only part of my music was there. to make a long, long story short, i managed to manually get all of my music into User #2/music/itunes/itunes music -- every song is in its correct album, under the correct artist. all of it is visible in my Finder, my itunes preferences show that my target location is User #2/music/itunes/itunes music. but when i launch itunes the library does not show all of the songs. if i go into the finder and open an individual song that i cannot see in the itunes library, i can double click on it and then that song will export to the itunes, begin to play, and i can see it get added to the library. so this action seems to get the song into the library, but i have maybe 1000 songs i'd have to individually do this with. obviously, i want to find a quicker way.

does anyone know how i can get all of the info in the music folders to be automatically reflected in the itunes library window?

thanks for any help you can offer!

Could it be as simple as going to iTunes and choose File ---Import and then choosing which folder to import.?

No, unfortunately the only files you can import are individual songs.....

Blast..Sorry....What about cmd+o add to library ? You could highlight the tracks using cmd click and then shift click to highlight a block.

Yes, but the problem is that we are talking literally about 1000 songs -- i'd have to go through every individual song in the music folders and compare it to the itunes library to see if it is in there. i'm trying to find a shortcut around this kind of tediousness.

when i had the original user problem, all of my songs were showing in the new user and i only had to figure out how to import the xml file to the new user in order to get back all of my playlists. i'm not sure if that would work in this case (a friend helped me figure the xml thing out but i really don't quite understand what it was we did), but i'm thinking there must be a solution similar to this -- a single, one-stroke importing move that will bring it all over.

it seems that most of what's missing are songs from my shared folder (things i've downloaded)..... again, those shared items are showing in my music folders but not in the itunes library list.....