I've got a mac with a version 10.10.5 and a iPhone 7 with 10.3.3. I was trying everything and nothing worked. So trying just to get back to where I started where I only had 8 songs with the little grey circle of death instead of all of them, I restored the last backup I had which was the night before.... In doing this it got back all the songs that had become grey but did not include the 8 that I had trouble with in the first place in the list of my song. I then just for the heck of it tried to drag the 8 onto my phone AND IT WORKED!!! HALLELUJAH!!!! I tried so many things from youtube vids and from comments so I'm only posting this cause ya never know what is going to work with apple.......... hope this helped you... and if it didnt....... well ummmm..... good luck!!
Smith David idk what else I can do. I mean I guess you just got to try everything. Just don't permanently delete your stuff that's all I've got to say.
Sorry Jeff, when I turned off my external hard drive the exclamation marks came back. Do you maybe know how to cure this please. I have spent so much time trying to resolve this problem. Regards, Ian.
Oh dear. The process works, as you've found, but it's clearly not viable to do this every time you want to play music. Idiot point first, give the drive a few seconds to get up to speed before opening iTunes, if you rush things this problem will occur. Assuming you're not doing that my suspicion turns to the drive itself. If you have space on another drive I'd copy your library across immediately so you have a backup. There are various programs for Mac / Windows that supposedly verify the integrity of a hard drive. I think the best thing to do would be to get a new drive and see if that cures the issue. In my experience when drives fail (and I've been through dozens) you get some little niggles then total failure. The other thing I'd do is sign up for something like Backblaze which will backup the drive for you now, even if it's not accessible to iTunes, just in case.... I think they offer a 30 day free trial. Better safe than sorry.
Sorry to hear about your problems. Hope these comments help. You need to make sure the tracks you've "lost" are accessible. Are those files still on the hard drive? If they were on a removable drive are the files still there, is the drive still connected - can you read / write other types of files. Once you've validated the music data files then the process does work. Certainly there have been changes to the interface over the years but the process remains fundamentally the same.
If your iTunes Library is corrupted, which the greyed out icons show, you need to take action to fix it. iTunes won't mend itself. The process I suggest only involves removing then reinstating tracks into the iTunes database - under no circumstances is it necessary to delete music from your computer. When the greyed out icons hit you, I don't think you have a choice.
Worked like a dream, Thank you.
Great to hear, especially as it's over six years since I posted this.
Thank you! It worked great! Please tell me how to sync iTunes with my iPad?
I've got a mac with a version 10.10.5 and a iPhone 7 with 10.3.3. I was trying everything and nothing worked. So trying just to get back to where I started where I only had 8 songs with the little grey circle of death instead of all of them, I restored the last backup I had which was the night before.... In doing this it got back all the songs that had become grey but did not include the 8 that I had trouble with in the first place in the list of my song. I then just for the heck of it tried to drag the 8 onto my phone AND IT WORKED!!! HALLELUJAH!!!! I tried so many things from youtube vids and from comments so I'm only posting this cause ya never know what is going to work with apple.......... hope this helped you... and if it didnt....... well ummmm..... good luck!!
nighean umbach can u help me
Smith David idk what else I can do. I mean I guess you just got to try everything. Just don't permanently delete your stuff that's all I've got to say.
Sorry Jeff, when I turned off my external hard drive the exclamation marks came back. Do you maybe know how to cure this please. I have spent so much time trying to resolve this problem. Regards, Ian.
Oh dear. The process works, as you've found, but it's clearly not viable to do this every time you want to play music. Idiot point first, give the drive a few seconds to get up to speed before opening iTunes, if you rush things this problem will occur. Assuming you're not doing that my suspicion turns to the drive itself. If you have space on another drive I'd copy your library across immediately so you have a backup. There are various programs for Mac / Windows that supposedly verify the integrity of a hard drive. I think the best thing to do would be to get a new drive and see if that cures the issue. In my experience when drives fail (and I've been through dozens) you get some little niggles then total failure.
The other thing I'd do is sign up for something like Backblaze which will backup the drive for you now, even if it's not accessible to iTunes, just in case.... I think they offer a 30 day free trial. Better safe than sorry.
I fucking love you
Nothing I do has worked to solve the gray out problem. I have restored my Ipod so many times that is not funny.
Sorry to hear about your problems. Hope these comments help.
You need to make sure the tracks you've "lost" are accessible. Are those files still on the hard drive? If they were on a removable drive are the files still there, is the drive still connected - can you read / write other types of files.
Once you've validated the music data files then the process does work. Certainly there have been changes to the interface over the years but the process remains fundamentally the same.
i deleted all my shit and didn't have it on a flash drive. wish I would've known you needed to...
im not gonna delete 4000 songs and reup and reedit
If your iTunes Library is corrupted, which the greyed out icons show, you need to take action to fix it. iTunes won't mend itself. The process I suggest only involves removing then reinstating tracks into the iTunes database - under no circumstances is it necessary to delete music from your computer. When the greyed out icons hit you, I don't think you have a choice.