iTunes related question

Before you send me to the Apple forums, please hear me out. I am not asking to figure out why iTunes won't accept 20 of about 950 songs, I'll just rerip/download them to avoid the hassle of dealing with ID3 Tags and corrupted mp3s. The problem is finding out what songs it doesn't want to import! The fact that there is no easy way to figure this out is about as lame as realizing that e-mailing yourself is still the quickest way to have access to a file anywhere!

I have found a post by kherova in the apple forums who detailed a very nice guide:

"I have a way to at least find out which songs aren't being found by itunes, but it is a little technical and I am making an assumption that you are familiar with certain aspects.

Essentially you need a list of all the files that exist, and a list of all the files iTunes thinks you have, then find the discrepancy.

First you need a program called SysExporter (to find the list of files you have). (http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/sysexp.html), it's free, and you will need excel.
After installing sysexp, open windows explorer (folder) and navigate to the root directory of where your music is stored.
ie: "iTunes Music" if your music is in C:\Documents and Settings\NAME\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music

Then search for ".mp3"
This should find all of your files in the right pane.
next open sysexp and follow the directions to copy the list of files to excel.
This list should have the path name for each of your songs

Next go to itunes, and export a playlist as a txt. Open that file with excel, and copy the filepath column called "Location" (column AA) to the sheet with the column of data pulled from sysexp. Use the VLOOKUP function to compare the two columns (if you don't know how, hit F1 and type VLOOKUP in caps).
sort the column of results (after doing a fill down), and you will end up with a bunch of #N/A's, those are the ones that itunes isn't seeing. "







However, SysExplorer doesn't pull titles and iTunes doesn't save filenames, which would be the only consistent way to compare my music collection. Reason is that my file names are in the form of "Artist - Title" and the title is, of course, just the title.

Is there any sort of script that can erase everything before the dash, and the one space that comes after? Or perhaps is there an actual easy way to compare the collections so I can find out which songs iTunes is missing. Damn software doesn't even have an import error log...

Thanks

 

Never mind guys, I figured it out. Will post a solution soon for anyone who is interested.