“The iTunes library file cannot be saved. A folder was specified instead of a file.” …what?

Question

I just updated to iTunes 11.

Now I get this error:

Huh? Some Googling turns up people with this problem in iTunes 7 & 8. That was a while ago. They suggested various things, including rebuilding the library (which I am NOT going to do unless it's the only option).

However, my search prompted me to look in my iTunes folder. Yikes: Most of those temp files appeared on 11/18/12, so this must have been happening before today when I upgraded.

So, is there a good solution? Why might this happen? Is re-building the library the only way? I'd rather not lose my date-added and play-count data.

Answer 1

This is a possible solution that I came across and (initially) it seems to have worked for me:

Quoted from Apple Support Communities:

I assume the problem is gone now and here's what I did to get rid of it:

• stop iTunes
• alt-start iTunes, so it offers 'Create Library' and 'Choose Library'
• choose 'Create Library' to create a new library (iTunes 1)
• stop iTunes
• alt-start iTunes, so it offers 'Create Library' and 'Choose Library'
• choose 'Choose Library' and chose my main library, which caused me so much pain

since then no more tmp files are left over in the iTunes folder and I hope it stays like this