In various folders I have duplicate entries. Where I can see duplicates, exactly 1 song is represented as 2 records (see screenshot below). When I view the properties screen, it shows me that these 2 records are exact the same file. I can however, change the rating, indepented of the records. When I play 1 of the 2 rows / records, then 2 lid up red. Now, I can track the duplicated with the duplicate finder. This screen takes a few minutes to get it's data (no progressbar is viewable here, so one could think the program hangs). It shows me 20687 duplicates. (Checked by 'Select All Duplicates' then 'Remove', then 'Cancel'). IF I Remove a duplicate, (I tested this on 1 item), it actually deletes the file itself also. That is highly NOT what I want. The file itself is not a duplicate of itself ofcourse. So this screen / tool is no use for me. And for a second reason, it also shows real actual duplicates (same songs that are in seperate folders), which I want to review first before deleting them. However, I want to leave the albums intact, so for this second reason, this tool is not a good use. I don't know exactly why I got the duplicates but I have a few clues that may lead to this situation. All my songs where pointed to a folder named: G:/music/DVD031/album-name/. Not long ago I upgraded to the Network version, so now the paths are invalid on my second computer. There is just no drive G ofcourse. So I made a share. Frome here it is some guessing work on what I did, because at that point I did not know what I had to do to remap the paths (didn't saw 'Remap Path' in Advanced): - I guess I added a Library folder to the share, but I don't know how I did that. At that point I had 2 folders in my Library Folders. (Viewable under 'Library folders' in Music Explorer). - Then I ran the 'Update Library...' tool and selected the share. The program was thinking very very very hard. It was, I think, chewing on the 40.000+ tracks. - I was not planning on waiting for the updating screen so I clicked Hide. On the status bar I saw a button Cancel, but no message in front of it, based on what I can cancel. Ofcourse I know it was updating the library. - Now I made an alteration on 1 music song (during the library update process). The album name was corrected. - The cancel button dissapeared. So I thought, it was ready to go. But no, still no songs could be played. - I closed the program. (That's what I sometimes do when I get sick of programs that won't do what I want ;-) ). It closed almost directly. Then started it again. ** - referring back to here later - Did some searching on the Helium Music Manager site, and discoverd the 'Remap path' tool. This tool did exactly what I wanted. - Listened to some songs, no harmfull tasks here. Then discovered I had duplicate entries. It does not show duplicated on every folder so I didn't noticed it inmediatly. ** Now at this point, I think I (no not I, but HMM) had created some duplicates. I had two library folders, and I think, as a background process, HMM was actually adding songs here AS not direct duplicates. (The folder was differend ofcourse). But after that, I ran the Remap Path tool, which altered th e G:/ folders to the share mapped folder, which gave me, at this point, precise 2 same records. And I don't know how to delete them. Who can help? (I can run SQL queries on the database, as a possibility to delete database entries, but I think you would not advice me this option as a preferred way of solving this problem.)
You might want to look into the Added date entry in the Music Explorer to find your duplicates (depending on when they were added). You can then safely remove them (make sure you only remove them from the library and not from the computer!)
That is exactly the answer I required to solve this problem as precise as possible ! (As spoken in the ticket) Thank you!