Restoring a deleted playlist in iTunes

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Restoring a deleted playlist in iTunes

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Q: Help! I’ve accidentally deleted a very special manual playlist from iTunes. It’d taken me hours and hours to create and meticulously rearrange, but I didn’t back it up on the computer. There is, however, a copy on my iPod still - is there any way to get it back without simply looking at the iPod and manually recreating the list in iTunes?

- Steve

A: Absolutely - don’t worry. If you have chosen to automatically synchronize your music in iTunes, we can exploit one of the iPod’s relatively obscure features for this purpose: On The Go playlists.

Because On The Go playlists that the iPod creates are automatically synchronized back into iTunes upon a synchronization, we can use this feature to automatically rebuild your lost playlist. However it’s important that you don’t synchronize the iPod until doing this procedure, or else iTunes will delete the playlist from it as well.

First, browse on the iPod to “Music → Playlists.” Highlight the playlist you’d like to recover, and hold down the center button until the playlist name flashes, adding the entire contents of this playlist, in order, to a new On The Go playlist. You can verify that this was accomplished by scrolling to the bottom of the iPod’s playlist listing, and opening the “On-The-Go” playlist.

Next, save the On-The-Go playlist on the iPod by scrolling to the bottom, and selecting “Save Playlist.” The iPod will now create “New Playlist 1,” which will synchronize back to the iTunes library automatically the next time you synchronize. Simply rename this playlist in iTunes, and you’ve successfully restored your lost playlist!

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Comments

1

Love the calculator.

Could you add 160 kbps?

Posted by mattwardfh in Texas on October 20, 2006 at 9:52 AM (PST)

2

Just added 160kbps, a few others that iTunes supports, as well as a custom bitrate field.

Enjoy!

Posted by Jerrod H. in TX on October 20, 2006 at 9:53 AM (PST)

3

I have a third generation ipod which holds my entire music library, and also a nano which appears on i tunes as a playlist. I want to buy a new 5th gen video ipod but I want this to be my new master and not a secondary playlist. How do I do this???

Posted by willed on October 21, 2006 at 4:12 AM (PST)

4

I have a problem with my nano :[. I accidently restored my ipod, which deleted all my songs. So after, I tried copying all the same songs back onto my ipod but when I ejected it from the computer, none of the songs showed on my ipod. I need help

Posted by efo310 on November 6, 2006 at 6:11 PM (PST)

5

Apologies for joining the discussion a little late, but in terms of John’s question regarding song ordering by year, I keep all of my albums in date order by using the fact that iTunes/the iPod numero-alphabetises albums. For example, under Radiohead I have:

(1993) Pablo Honey
(1995) The Bends
(1997) OK Computer
(2000) Kid A

Whereas before it would have read:

The Bends
Kid A
OK Computer
Pablo Honey

It’s pretty time-consuming to set up in the first place, and it means that although you’re now in date order, the date will be permanently in view beside the album name. Still, I’ve been using that system for years, and wouldn’t even consider changing back now.

Hope that helps!

Posted by scottyd on January 6, 2007 at 8:11 AM (PST)

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