iTunes is doubling all of my files - any ideas?

Factual Questions
1

I just got a new computer (yay!) but now have the onerous task of moving all of my files (boo!). What’s making the problem worse is that iTunes is being a total dipshit. I have all the music on an external hard drive, and when I copy and paste it into iTunes, it magically multiples by two (and sometimes three) on my new computer. What the hell? For awhile, I was adding it artist by artist, just to make sure I didn’t really accidentally have two copies of the file in each folder (I didn’t) and then when I added one more, wham, suddenly everything I’d already added procreated and I had two versions of everything.

What the hell, iTunes?

Anyone have any ideas for fixing it? Because I have to say that the idea of manually deleting thousands of files is not really appealing.

2

Edit --> Display Duplicates

ETA: how does the music show up as “double”? Under Library --> Music? In your actual hard drive? We probably need a little more info…

3

It’s only showing up in my iTunes as double. In the music library (I’m using Windows 7), everything looks normal. I’ve put my music in the music library, copied and pasted it all, dragged it into iTunes, and voila, suddenly there’s two (and occasionally three) of everything.

4

Why do that in the first place?
If you hold down the option key when you start iTunes, it’ll let you select and use the library off your ext hd, without copy/paste horrors.

Right now, it sounds as if you’ve some options set stangely in iTunes prefs. Is the App set to consolidate and organize your music folder?

5

Check if the option “Copy files to iTunes music folder” is checked, and uncheck it. This option will do what you describe, so have iTunes not do it.

6

You’ve tried each of those things separately, or you keep doing all three at once? (Stupid question, but we have to rule these things out…)

7

It stopped doing it! Thanks, everyone.

8

Did the folders you dragged to iTunes contain playlist files? If so, that’s why.

9

Can you explain what you changed? I also had this happen and manually deleted hundreds (thousands?) of songs.

I’d love to avoid doing this in the future.