iTunes missing playlists. No upgrade/downgrade or crash.

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Level 1

5 points

iTunes missing playlists. No upgrade/downgrade or crash.

I am running High Sierra (10.12.6) on a Macbook Pro. I use iTunes daily as a working musician. Yesterday, all of my 50 or more playlists disappeared and after many years of use, I only have a time machine backup, which I hope is enough. Im just beginning to understand the complexities of the iTunes library structure. I just realized that I have a split library as well. Also, I noticed that in the trash folder was “iTunes library extras.itdb” and “iTunes library genius.itdb”, but i don’t know if that is significant. I have no idea where to start. Do I address the split library condition first or should I try to restore from the time machine backup first? I also realize that 3 separate iTunes libraries exist (1 library on the laptop hard drive and 2 on the external drive) Should I fix the above problems before I consolidate into 1 portable library on the external drive? What a mess! Thank you for your time…

MacBook Pro

Posted on Aug 9, 2022 12:23 AM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

245,177 points

Aug 9, 2022 10:12 AM in response to rgrajeda

We need to see what all is running, a report from this will not display any personal info...

EtreCheck is a FREE simple little diagnostic tool to display the important details of your system configuration and allow you to copy that information to the Clipboard. It is meant to be used with Apple Support Communities to help people help you with your Mac. It will not display any personal info.

https://www.etrecheck.com/

Pastebin is a good place to paste the whole report if you capture the URL while there…

https://pastebin.com/

Workable but harder for me to work with...the Note tool on the bottom of this editor's toolbar, as shown in the image, to copy and paste the output from EtreCheck. In a Reply before you click post, look for this to add longer texts...

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Answer 2

BDAqua

Level 10

245,177 points

Aug 9, 2022 6:37 AM in response to rgrajeda

Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at startup), does the problem occur in Safe Mode? Could take 10 minutes or more.

Safe mode attempts to repair Disks & clears lots of caches & loads safe Drivers, & prevents loading of 3rd party extensions, so if Safe Mode works try again in regular boot.

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Answer 3

rgrajeda Author

Level 1

5 points

Aug 9, 2022 9:45 PM in response to BDAqua

I successfully restored my playlists using Time Machine. It was very easy, and should be suggested anytime Time Machine backups are available and current. Thanks for your assistance!

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