Accidentally Merged Music and Pictures Library

[Heathsideboy]

Somehow or another, by accident, I have managed to merge my music library with my pictures library. There are even some OneDrive files in there too. You will notice from the 1st screenshot that the 1st Music is highlighted on the left preview pane. This is where I have music files mixed up with picture files but it clearly says at the top, Libraries > Music.

In the 2nd screenshot it shows the 2nd Music highlighted on the left preview pane. I just have my music files in there and they are not mixed up with anything else. This is how it should be. However, you can clearly see that at the top it says Libraries > Music > Music.

Can anybody fathom out what I may have done to cause this and how I can get these libraries back to how they should be? I would appreciate any help. Thanks in advance.

Can anybody also tell me if the folders and files would be put right if I did a backup and restore to an earlier time?

HB

 

[Heathsideboy]

Can anybody help me with this please? Thank you

HB

 

[Bighorn]

A choice is to simply remove the display of Libraries in File Explorer's View tab and Navigation pane, Quick Access can be collapsed, both actions shorten that pane or in other words they are shortcuts to the actual folders and files. The Properties of the folders listed there will show the actual location of C:\Users\USER-NAME-HERE, that's where I'd work in copying the files into the desired folder/s.

 

[wegmand]

Do you see your picture files in the Pictures library? If so, that's good because it means that the default path for pictures is unchanged so the Pictures library still knows where to find your pictures. But since you see those same files in the Music library, it means that they're also referenced by the Music library. Any library can point to several file paths which allows you to have music files in multiple locations that can all be shown by clicking on the Music library. It looks like some picture file location got added to your Music library.

If you click on "Libraries" you should see the various libraries in the right pane, i.e. Music, Pictures, Videos, etc. Right-click on the Music library icon and select Properties from the menu. The box that appears will show you "Library locations:" . In addition to the default location, there's probably a yellow folder icon for your pictures folder that shouldn't be there. Somehow that folder got designated as part of your Music library. If you select that folder, you can Remove... it from the Music library. This doesn't delete any files, it only takes it out of the Music library collection. The next time you click on Music, you should only see the files from your Music library.

Here's a guide to Libraries in Windows 10: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-use-libraries-windows-10