Article
Deleting Album Artwork en masse
By Jerrod H.
Contributing Editor
Published: Thursday, September 7, 2006
Articles Categories: Ask iLounge
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Q: A bunch of songs from multiple albums somehow got the wrong artwork and I need to get rid of them. It’s way too much of a hassle to go through song by song, so is there a way to delete all artwork from a whole bunch of songs in one go?
- Anonymous
A: Absolutely. First select all of the files you want to change, using one of the two methods below:
To select a continuous stream of files, click the first, hold down the Shift key, and click the last. All songs between will be selected.
To select files which aren’t listed continuously, you can click each file individually while holding Control (PC) or Command (the “Apple” key on a Mac) to add them to your selection.
Then, simply select “Get Info” from iTunes’ “File” menu. Here, you can change multiple properties and tags en masse very easily. Changes will be applied to any field with the checkbox checked. To erase album art across your selection, for example, select the checkbox next to the Artwork field, but don’t do anything to the field itself - leave it empty, and click “OK.” iTunes will delete the artwork of all songs in your selection.
Be careful in this multiple-song Info window, however—it also makes proper tags easy to overwrite!
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1
dave,
read some of the tutorials on ipodwizard to learn how to update your ipod to an older firmware without having to restore.
Posted by mrmojorisingi on September 7, 2006 at 5:20 PM (PST)
2
Thanks for your recommendations for deleting song files from the library and the hard drive. I am having a problem, however, deleting the song files from the playlist view. When I simply delete the playlist, the songs remain in the library and on the hard drive. When I try ALT-Delete, as you suggest, nothing happens. It’s as if I didn’t press anything at all. How can I delete all of the songs in a playlist without having to find each individual song in the main library?
Posted by jasonact on September 8, 2006 at 11:31 AM (PST)
3
Jason:
Go in the playlist and select all of the songs. This could be by clicking one and then hitting Ctrl+A. When they are highlighted, hit Shift+Delete. A dialogue box should ask if you want to delete them from your harddrive or the iTunes library. Choose the harddrive (Obviously…) Voila!
Posted by papayaninja on September 8, 2006 at 11:57 AM (PST)
4
Brilliant! Thanks for the tip.
Posted by jasonact on September 8, 2006 at 7:35 PM (PST)
5
jasonact-
As papayaninja mentioned, the modifier key is Shift, not Alt. This will work either on songs (as papayaninja noted), or on playlists (as the article states).
My error, and it’s been fixed… thanks for pointing it out.
Posted by Jerrod H. in TX on September 9, 2006 at 8:37 AM (PST)
6
I’ve managed to update to itunes ver 7. My problem lies in updating my 5G ipod from ver 1.1 to ver 1.2. I keep getting error messages, error 1417 to be precise! My 2nd problem is that whereas it was updating my Contacts and Calender perfectly fine with the previous itunes version its now asking for Outlook 2003 or later and i have Outlook 2002!Help please. I’m a Win XP user.
Thanks in advance
Posted by Taiwo on September 15, 2006 at 9:09 PM (PST)
7
my windows computer drive completely crashed. i used podutil to reclaim the music. but my library is twice the size and none of my playlists are in itunes. where did i go wrong??? and what’s the best fix—deleted the 3 files in my music and recopy OR…? (in my defense, i found it hard to read the printed copy of the instructions b/c of the ads!) thanks for your help!
Posted by mismarbeth on October 2, 2006 at 7:30 PM (PST)
8
My computer just crashed and the Itunes data was lost.
Can I download from my ipod mini back into itunes?
Posted by Ashly on October 17, 2006 at 3:02 AM (PST)
9
I am having trouble updating my itunes on my external hard drive, what can I do?
Posted by Ashley on March 27, 2011 at 1:19 PM (PST)