i have a bunch of songs doubled up and tripled up, with only the originals actually existing. The duplicates don't work and have exclamation icons next to them. I don't want them there they are annoying, and I don't want to manually sift through it all. Help?

You might have to manually do it.

Or you could erase the whole library (but not send to trash) and import your music folder again.

I love my Mac, but I'm finding my kid is figuring everything out about it faster than I am.

Like, I have't figured out how to compress a mix so that I can upload it and post it online yet. I zipped them on the PC.
Probably something even simpler on the Mac, just haven't noticed what yet.

If you're using windows try Dupe Eliminator

I don't use it any more, but it is a great add-on for Itunes.

click on the folder holding the cntrl key and select "make archive"

In your "Finder" folder, goto Music.
HIghlight file you want to .zip
Goto File dropdown menu on the toolbar
Click on "Create an Archive for...."

hey, y'all are meant to be helping me.

I can't remember if you can sort by the '!' icon and then just highlight all and then shift-delete. If you can't then I've always just gone through and manually shift-deleted those songs.

itunes mixes aren't showing up as separate folders in "Music". Everything's separated in "Music" by artist. So, do I need to move the mixes from itunes into their own folders? Or do I just go back to the abacus?

I've always had to manually do it. Your best bet if you have a lot of missing files is probably to erase and re-import your music folder, as mentioned above. Just don't "move to trash".

Take your medication, then reboot. Your iTunes should then only have songs that exist.

If you change the artist/album info in "get info" so the songs are all under the same file it should work. I have not made a mix for download yet, so I haven't tried this method, however, I have definitely changed artist names or album titles in itunes and it automatically updates under the "finder" music file.

Okay then