Problems Syncing Selected Playlists

Article

Problems Syncing Selected Playlists

Ask iLounge offers readers the opportunity to get answers to their iPod-, iPhone-, iPad-, iTunes-, or Apple TV-related questions from a member of the iLounge editorial team. We'll answer several questions here each week, and of course, you can always get help with more immediate concerns from the iLounge Discussion Forums. Submit your questions for consideration using our Ask iLounge Submit Form. We reserve the right to edit questions for grammar, spelling, and length.

View the complete Ask iLounge archives...

Q: I deleted some playlists that I had created ages ago on my iPod and added some more
songs and new playlists. My iPod is almost full so I deleted more songs but now all my songs have diappeared and when I connect the iPod the error message “Songs on the iPod cannot be updated because all of the playlists selected for updating no longer exist” comes up. How do I get my songs back onto my ipod!?

- Laurie

A: In this case it sounds like you were synchronizing only “Selected Playlists” to your iPod rather than syncing your entire library. This may be due to you selecting specific playlists, or if your library was too large for your iPod, iTunes may have automatically set up a selected playlist for you to fill your iPod.

Either way, however, iTunes is telling you that it has nothing to sync to your iPod as you’ve deleted the playlists that it was using to determine what to put onto your iPod. For the same reason, your iPod will be empty as all of the playlists in iTunes that were being copied to the iPod are now gone.

To fix this issue, simply connect your iPod to iTunes, and select it in the source list. The main screen should show a summary of the iPod configuration. Select the “Music” tab, and you’ll see a configuration screen similar to the following:

From here you can either change the setting to “All songs and playlists” (in which case your entire music library will be copied to your iPod during the next sync), or select the specific playlists that you want transferred to your iPod. Once you’ve adjusted these settings, simply hit the “Apply” button that appears in the bottom right corner, and your iPod should synchronize the content you’ve selected.

If after hitting “Apply” iTunes determines that it cannot fit the items you’ve selected to sync on your iPod, it will advise you of this with a warning message. If you’ve chosen to synchronize “All songs and playlists” iTunes will offer to build a playlist for you and autofill your iPod with selected content. It does this somewhat randomly, however, so you may prefer to set up your own playlists for this purpose.

Alternatively, if you’re already syncing only selected playlists and the content is still too large to fit on your iPod, iTunes will simply notify you of this fact, and you will need to revise your selections by either selecting fewer playlists, or removing some of the items from your selected playlists.

One other consideration: If you think that your iPod should be large enough to hold the music you’ve selected, yet you’re receiving errors telling you that your selected items won’t fit on the iPod, take a look at the amount of storage being taken up in the orange “Other” category on your iPod, which can be observed in the capacity bar at the bottom of the summary screen.

If you actually have no music or data files on your iPod and this number is higher than 100MB, this may indicated “orphaned” music files. In this case, you should perform a “Restore” on your iPod by using the appropriate button on that same screen, which will reformat the iPod and erase everything on it, giving you a clean slate on which to reload your music.

The most asked question at iLounge.com:

How do I copy content from my iPod/iPhone onto my computer?

Converting DVDs, web video, TV shows and more:

The Complete Guide to iPod, Apple TV and iPhone Video Formats

Converting DVDs, web video, TV shows and more:

The Complete Guide to iPod, iPhone and Apple TV Video Conversion (Mac)

Converting DVDs, web video, TV shows and more:

The Complete Guide to iPod, iPhone and Apple TV Video Conversion (Win)

Best Speakers?

Best Headphones?

Best Case?

Best In-Car Solution?

Best Battery Extender?

Find more answers in the latest publications in our Library. Free downloads developed by the editors of iLounge!

Ask iLounge Archives:

6-7-13: Inline Remote + Mic adapters for iPhone

6-6-13: Filtering content by iTunes Store account

6-5-13: Deleting backups made under another iCloud ID

6-4-13: Blocking data access on an iPhone

6-3-13: Changing iPhone number for iMessage

View the complete Ask iLounge archives...

« Normalizing volume between tracks

iTunes truncating long filenames »

Comments

If you have a comment, news tip, advertising inquiry, or coverage request, a question about iPods/iPhones/iPad or accessories, or if you sell or market iPod/iPhone/iPad products or services, read iLounge's Comments + Questions policies before posting, and fully identify yourself if you do. We will delete comments containing advertising, astroturfing, trolling, personal attacks, offensive language, or other objectionable content, then ban and/or publicly identify violators.

Recent Reviews

New Deals

Shop for Accessories: Cases, speakers, chargers, etc.

iLounge

Article