My daughter’s IPOD songs are stored in an Itunes library on my desktop computer. Recently, she wiped all of those songs out of her Ipod and replaced them with 67 other songs off of her laptop. And she just bought four more from the Itunes store with a gift card that she won at school.
How do I return the original 160 songs to her Ipod and allow her to retain the 71 new additions?
Click and drag.
If you have a USB stick or can burn the songs to a disc you can then add them to the library on her laptop. You just copy them from the music folder on your PC.
They don’t pick up when I try to click them.
You need to get the song files off your computer and onto hers. Burning songs onto a DVD if possible would be easy - they’d all fit as files onto a DVD and she can load the DVD into her laptop and copy the songs off. USB stick would do the same thing. So you need to find the folder where the mp3s are located (likely iTunes Library folder?) and copy those however you want to and load them onto her laptop. Trying to drag the song titles off iTunes will do nothing.
Why? Why can’t she just authorize both computers for that ipod?
Well she could (maybe? I’m not even sure because all my stuff is only on one computer) but since she is only trying to get 160 songs from the desktop, it seems like it would be easier to just burn the files to a disc and throw them on the laptop so she only has to deal with using the iPod on one computer.
If she’s manually managing the music that won’t be a problem but it sounds from the OP as though she is syncing the iPod to her library.
What does “authorize computers for an ipod” mean?
No,.we can’t sync, or it will destroy all of the songs she already has on the Ipod.
How do I manually manage the music?
Remember the title of the thread?
Not sure how much this translates (and I’m not at my home computer so the details will be vague).
My son had some songs on his computer/ipod that I wanted. I found the folder (it will be under my music/I-tunes/library (or something similar) with a folder for each artist and a subfolder for each album). I copied the relevent folders to my computer using the windows copy (over the home network in my case but you could do the stick/cd/dvd options). In I-tunes I then used the menu option for “load from folder” and pointed at the folder(s) copied over. This imports those folders into the existing library and you have them combined.
It sounds like the daughter sync’d the iPod to the desktop iTunes library, which had a set of 160 songs, then sync’d the iPod to the laptop iTunes library, which had a different set of 71 songs. Syncing an iPod to an iTunes library means that the iPod’s entire contents will be matched to the contents of that iTunes library. This is a problem, as you saw, when the libraries on the desktop and the laptop are different.
You will therefore need to copy the songs from one library to another. Since the laptop iTunes library is smaller, I suggest you copy those songs. There are a number of ways you can do this, but the most convenient is probably to use the iPod itself to copy the songs.
First, plug in the iPod to the laptop and allow iTunes to come up. In iTunes, select the iPod in the source list and click the Summary tab. In the Options section, select “Enable disk use”, then click “Apply”. The iPod should now appear as a new drive.
Second, copy the song files from the iTunes library to the iPod. You’ll have to figure out where the songs are actually stored, but (assuming Windows) it will be in someplace like “My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music”. You can simply drag the entire “iTunes Music” folder (note: not “iTunes”) to the iPod.
Third, click on “Eject” and disconnect the iPod from the laptop. Connect it to the desktop. Wait for iTunes to come up. Go to “My Computer” (assuming Windows) and open up the iPod drive. Look for the “iTunes Music” folder that you just copied to it. Now drag that folder onto iTunes. This should copy the music files into the iTunes library. This may take a while.
Fourth, select the iPod in iTunes. Click on the “Sync” button and wait for the iPod to synchronize.
Fifth, delete the “iTunes Music” folder from the iPod drive. You can’t do this from iTunes so you’ll have to go back to Explorer (assuming Windows) and drag it to the trash. Once that’s done you may also want to disable disk use on the iPod. This is just like step one except that you uncheck “Enable disk use”. On the other hand, you may want to sync the laptop iTunes library to the desktop iTunes library, in which case you’ll have to repeat the above procedure but from desktop to laptop.
To prevent future confusion, I strongly suggest that syncing the iPod be done on only one system, either desktop or laptop. Any new music should also only be added to that system.
Can I email them?
And when I have the Ipod plugged into a USB port, why will My Computer not show me the port with the device plugged into it?
This is really annoying.
Belay my last. Thanks to all who responded, especially Terminus Est. I’ll have to wait until Michaela gets home from school to turn on her laptop, but I think I’ll be able to manage this.
I’m reallly glad that the mp3 player I use is a Muvo.
Another problem; the songs that we just got on to my computer turn out to be mp3s and open with Windows Media Player instead of iTunes. Now how can we fix this problem? Does anyone know?
Belay my last again. I just realized that I could put them into a separate folder, then import them using itunes.
But is it possible to import them as a group instead of one at a time?
If you have them all in the same folder, surely you can use File -> “Add Folder to Library”
Thank you so much.
I am really bad at this stuff.
ETA: What is it about Ipods that you can’t just add the songs directly to the device? If I were to wlk into an Apple store with my daughter’s Ipod and pay them 99 cents for a song, wouldn’t they be able to add just the one song without removing everything else?
Can you walk into a physical Apple store and purchase songs? Honest question; I always thought (or assumed) they were only available in their online store.
To enable manual access of the iPod, plug it into your computer.
Go to iTunes, select the iPod in the left hand menu.
Click the Summary tab and select “Manually manage music and videos.”, then Apply.
That should allow you to access the iPod like it was a USB drive, and you can drag and drop music to it. I don’t believe it will let you add videos manually, but I haven’t tried it myself so I’m not sure.
To open MP3s in iTunes instead of Windows Media Player by default, right click on an MP3, go to Open With, select Choose Program, select iTunes and tick “Always use the selected program to open this type of file”. (I’m running Windows XP, but it should be a similar process for other OSs.)
I went into an Apple store once when Michaela wanted to get a look at the Iphone (that she knew I’m never going to buy her), and they had USB plugs at various spots around the store, so I assumed you could. I didn’t own an mp3 player at the time, so I didn’t explore the issue more closely.
Also, when Tower Records was still open, they had these consoles where you could look up a song or an album and there was a USB port on that. So I thought this was a method of buying things in a brick-and-mortar store that was easier and cheaper for them.