updating iTunes library

I just retagged about 200 files in my music library and, based on those tags, many of the file names have changed. Now, I'm trying to determine the best way to get iTunes to update.

Going to File >add folder to library and navigating to the folder where I store my music (it's a HUGE collection, so it's on its own hard drive) works okay, except for one problem: the iTunes library still shows all entries for all the old files even though they don't exist. This is kind of a drag, because manually deleting 200+ songs is tedious.

My iTunes library has a column where missing files have an exclamation point. I tried clicking on it so all the missing files would at least be grouped together. Alas, this did not work.

Winamp has a feature that allows you to automatically remove missing files. How is this done within iTunes?

Any other thoughts?

Why didn't you do the retagging in iTunes?

I think you are SOL unfortunately

I was using a program called Tag & Rename, which compares tags against Amazon's database. As far as I know, iTunes has no such feature, but please correct me if I'm wrong about that.

Select all of the old files in iTunes and hit delete. If it asks you a question, select yes. Whenever you change an actual filename on a drive, or move the file to a different drive, iTunes will lose track of it.

Your library can't be THAT big, look at my sig. That's just music.

So you're saying just clean out the library and rescan, or is there some way to delete only the library entries that are no longer valid?

No, my library is significantly smaller, but with 38,000 entries, it still takes a while to manage. Removing those bad links took less than 90 seconds with Winamp. You'd think iTunes would have something similar.

I would just select all your music and hit delete. Then just re-add it all. I do this on occasion just to get rid of dead tags etc. You'll lose all of your ratings and play counts though.

You actually have to rebuild your library from scratch just to remove dead tags? Unbelievable. Clearly iTunes ISN'T the superior jukebox program Apple claims it is.

iTunes has its own library database file where it keeps track of all of your files, you went outside of iTunes and changed the files using another tagging program.

This isn't any symbol of iTunes or Winamps superiority, this is just you going outside of a programs normal operating procedure and expecting everything to work just like you want it to

You could try one of dougs scripts to replace the dead tracks http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/scripts07.php?page=4#itunestrackcpr