iTunes is out of sync with ID3 tags

problem: iTunes is out of sync with ID3 tags

• You've used a tool to manage your MP3 ID3 tags and iTunes is out of sync with the changes
• You would like to refresh ID3 tags on selected tracks in iTunes or your entire iTunes Library

impact: grrrrrr

This is rather frustrating, all that hard work to manage your tags and iTunes gives you the middle finger and your ID3 tags are out of date...

solution:

This should work for _ALL_ iTunes versions up to the time of writing, which is 10.1.
In theory it should also work on all platforms too.

1. First off, close iTunes if open, make sure its dead
2. Make sure the tracks you want to work with are not read only
   You can protect iTunes from modifying your tracks by settings files to read only
3. Open iTunes
4. Select the tracks that you want to refresh
   You can select _ALL_ but be warned the more you select, the longer the process will take. I strongly suggest being selective, at least until you've mastered the technique
5. With the tracks selected press CTRL+I
   You can also right click or activate the context menu and click "Get Info"
6. Make sure NO checkboxes are checked
7. Select the sorting tab
8. Enter anything you like into a blank sorting field
   This will check the checkbox for the specific field
9. Double check only the sorting checkbox is selected
10. Click OK
11. iTunes will show a progress bar as it applies changes
12. You should see the tracks now have the latest ID3 tags
13. Repeat to remove the sort tag when your happy

Note a positive side effect of this operation... any missing files that were selected will now have the exclamation mark next to it, might be helpful to some :)

citation:

I've combined methods from these pages
Props to Kishore @ Chinto's blog
and Yoricko @ Harmonic Mixing Community