If you saw the 2 then Plex did ti correctly. Removing the old files and rescanning should not have changed the metadata. Can you provide exact steps on what you did?
- Copied select folders of series to new share (same structure, i.e. root folder sees exactly the same thing)
- Added the new share as a second folder to an existing library in Plex
- Rescanned Library in Plex
- Verified that the episodes were showing 2 files - also, no new series or anything appeared, so I assumed matching was fine.
- Deleted the series folders that I copied in the original share
- Rescanned Library in Plex
- The series that I deleted now appear as âNewly Addedâ and are completely refetched
Edit: I tried now again with the option to empty trash automatically disabled and this seemed to have done the trick.
Hmm. You did get 1 step wrong. Not sure if it would have caused the issue you saw.
- Deleted the series folders that I copied in the original share
Instead of that, you should have removed the old share from the library. If you deleted the files but left the folder linked to the library, your server would see the blank folder. I have another report where having a link to a bank folder and to a non-blank folder was causing some odd issues. I donât see how this could result in everything being new, but that could be a bug. I have not looked into that yet.
Just make the new folder scan your personal Media as an agent with in the Advance settings⊠because the Agent tells plex were to pull the data when it sees new files to process
Sorry for the late reply.
But I donât want to remove the whole share. I want to individually move series or movies to a different share of the same library and I want Plex to understand that it just moved instead of âreaddingâ the movie.
Oh. if you are moving individual shows/movies from 1 library to another, then itâs not possible. Plex only remembers customizations on a per library basis. This is sort of intentional so you can have different libraries with different information for the same movie/show. The only way is to do the manual database edit mentioned previously.
Okay, I just did a test of this and it worked for me. I know it retains the series info and the watch history, but Iâm not sure what else is retained or lost.
So I tested this on Cloak and Dagger. The series was in my FANTASY AND SCI-FI library which points to a folder D:\Plex Library\Series â Fantasy and Scifi.
I created a new folder D:\temp2021. I added this folder to my FANTASY AND SCI-FI library. So the library now points to 2 folders. I moved the series folder from D:\Plex Library\Series â Fantasy and Scifi to the new folder D:\temp2021 and all the metadata was retained.
I then created a new library called CLOAK AND DAGGER and added the D:\temp2021 folder. The folder was now being scanned by 2 libraries (CLOAK AND DAGGER and FANTASY AND SCI-FI). The new library showed the series Cloak and Dagger quite quickly but everything showed up as not watched. I then scanned the CLOAK AND DAGGER library again the watched history was the same in both libraries.
I then removed the D:\temp2021 folder from the FANTASY AND SCI-FI library and rescanned the library. The Cloak and Dagger series was now in the new CLOAK AND DAGGER library with its metadata and no longer existed in the FANTASY AND SCI-FI library.
Iâve done this over a year ago with my Fantasy and Sci-Fi series. All my series were previously in a single SERIES library and everything I needed to be retained was retained, so I hope this resolves your issue.
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Oh and I just moved the series back again and deleted the CLOAK AND DAGGER library and the data was once again retained.
I too want to be able to do this. So, I created a Feature Request here in the hope it gets enough votes to make it an actual feature in the future.
You can also see what I tried to do and how it did not work for me.
Votes on the Feature Request are appreciated!
Thank you
Just piling on - Iâve been successfully moving libraries around (keep outgrowing volumes 
) Using the copy/add path/sync/remove path/delete old files method as well, with a compare step thrown in for good measure. Itâs actually not bad to do and the extra steps help ensure a clean transfer.
That being said, a one-step âmove libraryâ button would be great 
I think itâs worth noting that with this process the âwatchedâ vs âunwatchedâ tag and ratings follow the media to the new library but information such as âplay historyâ and âdate addedâ does not. I just attempted this technique with a music library and hoped to retain the number of times each track had been listened to and when (plex uses this info to create dynamic categories like âmost played in Julyâ) but none of that information carried over to the new library.
After a few hours of reading posts here and on reddit and a bunch of experimentation, Iâm convinced that there is currently no way to accomplish this without some SQL trickery.
