Question

I have a Mac.

My iTunes library is on an external drive.

I recently upgraded to 10.6 by doing a clean install (i.e., reformat & reinstall).

After doing that, I was able to set my iTunes music folder to the external drive, and all of my songs are there in the Library, which is great.

However, it has lost all of my Playlists.

What is the best way to get them back? I really don't want to manually re-create every single one.

I still have the playlists on my iPod, so if there is some way to import them from there, then I will be happy to do that.

Answer 1

It sounds like you generated a new iTunes library file because playlists are part of the library. If your music folder and iTunes library are in two different locations that could cause this confusion while setting up iTunes on your new computer.

Have you tried opening the library from before the upgrade by holding down option while launching iTunes? That will prompt you to choose the location of your original library file.

Answer 2

Your playlists are part of your iTunes Media/Music Library (the .xml file in ~/Music/iTunes). Hopefully you have that backed up. You'll find them in the file as follows:

<dict>
	<key>Name</key><string>untitled playlist</string>
	<key>Playlist ID</key><integer>61405</integer>
	<key>Playlist Persistent ID</key><string>4F69341A40311A36</string>
	<key>All Items</key><true/>
</dict>

Search for "Playlist ID". You should be able to just copy and paste them directly into your new XML file (everything between <dict> and </dict>, inclusive). Make sure you keep a backup.

Answer 3

sentui can import the playlists from your ipod