Missing media
Fix missing or offline samples in Ableton
When you move a project, rename a folder, or open a Set on another machine, Live can report that media files are missing and clips show as offline. The audio is usually still on your drive. Live just lost the path to it. Here is how to point Live back at the files.
Why samples go offline
A Live Set stores a path to each sample it uses. Some paths are relative to the project folder, others are absolute paths to locations like your User Library or an external drive. When a referenced file moves, gets renamed, or sits on a drive that is not mounted, Live cannot resolve the path and marks the clip offline.
Locate and replace missing files
Live has a built-in tool for relinking missing media in bulk. It searches a folder you choose and matches files by name.
- Open the View menu and show the File Manager, then choose Manage Files for the current Set.
- Click Missing Files. Live lists every sample it cannot find.
- Under Search, set the folder where the audio actually lives, and enable searching subfolders if needed.
- Click Go. Live scans the folder and proposes matches.
- Review the matches and apply them. The offline clips come back online.
Make the fix permanent
Relinking fixes the open Set, but the references can break again if the files move. To make the project portable, pull the media inside the project folder.
Open the File menu and choose Collect All and Save. Live copies the now-resolved samples into the project Samples folder and rewrites the Set to use the local copies.
Prevent it next time
Run Collect All and Save before you move a project, copy it to another drive, or send it to a collaborator. A collected project carries its samples with it, so there is nothing left to go offline.
See sample status across your library
Crate reads every .als in your folder and surfaces the samples and plugins each project uses, so you can see at a glance which projects depend on external media before you move anything.
It also flags projects whose files have gone missing on disk, so a broken reference is something you catch in the library rather than the next time you open the Set.