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Songs are greyed out with a dotted circle next to them and won't sync

I added some songs to my iTunes library today from CDs and downloads outside of iTunes. There are also other songs that aren't working which have been purchased from iTunes via my phone. I've been trying to sync them Ito my iPhone 5 for hours but they won't. My iTunes is set to sync the whole library and they are ticked as well. They appear fine in the library and play but when I go to my phone and 'on this iPhone' they are greyed out and there is a dotted circle on the left of them. All the other songs are going onto my phone fine, it's just these ones. My iPhone is on ios7 and I updated iTunes to the most recent version today before trying to sync. How can I get them to sync

iPhone 5, iOS 7

Posted on Sep 25, 2013 12:17 PM

Reply
135 replies

Apr 20, 2015 3:19 PM in response to Jerrill

Hi Jerrill,

All of us don't know you but because of your trick, everybody owed you! (I even login here to write you something lol)

I did what you said and it really worked! It's been bothering me since forever but now everything's perfect. I hope this thing won't happen again next time, but now thanks to you, I know what to do next time it happens again.


Thanks a lot!

May 13, 2015 8:04 PM in response to amyy15

I had the same issue. What I ended up doing is going into my itune song list on my computer, select the songs from the album you want to put onto your ipod. Copy them to the music list in the ipod. Click on the ipod music section, locate and select the songs you want to add, right click and create a playlist that way. For some reason, I could bring some lists over that were in my itunes library, but other lists would be grayed out with a circle around them. I deleted these lists and followed the procedure above. Then these lists showed up in my ipod and I could play them.

Jul 23, 2015 5:37 PM in response to amyy15

Hoping to save other folks some time by sharing what worked for me. I tried Jerrill's tip regarding iFunbox, etc., but that did not work for me. I searched other threads, and then thought I might try just un-checking all the music I had previously selected that I wanted to sync (under my iPhone and Sync Music in iTunes), syncing my iPhone with no music selected, then going back and re-checking my desired songs and re-syncing. The dreaded ghost songs were gone and properly synced to my iPhone.


My problem was not with music I had purchased, but rather was from CDs I had uploaded into iTunes. iTunes would randomly leave certain songs off when I tried to sync them to my iPhone. So that's why Jerrill's tip did not work....I tried it anyway as I had tried everything else but realized I just had to clear everything off, sync, re-select, and sync again.


Yay!

Aug 16, 2015 2:14 PM in response to amyy15

I had this problem, and got away with it thoroug a post put here years ago, but I think this could help.

I had an issue after Apple introduced Apple Music. At that point iTunes Match lost everything in the cloud, so I switched off all cloud services in my iPod and one pc, the one I was working with. Unfortunately, when I connected the iPod to the next PC, it synced automatically, and wiped off everything but the bought music.

So, I started again. I have my buys and rips on at least three pc's, so I made sure that next time I connected to any computer, all cloud services would be off.

Absolutely no chance for iTunes to sync automatically, make sure of that!

I went to the computer with the largest library, and spent 3 hours dragging everything to my iPod manually. All went well to the end. Last time I checked there were like 250 songs in the queue. When I finished the alphabets, I noticed nothing was happening anymore.

I checked my iPod content in iTunes and noticed that half of the stuff I thought having transferred were grayed out with the dotted circle.

****. Do I have to do all this again?

No. I go check some forae, and here goes:

Years ago on this forum somebody said to right-click a greyed-out song, uncheck it, right-click again, and recheck.

And heureka! The transfer procedure starts again!


I think the problem lies in the iPod's RAM filling up. The ******* thing should give an alert, but in this forum driven world, it won't.


Thanks to the guy who first suggested this. I just couldn't find U anymore!

Songs are greyed out with a dotted circle next to them and won't sync

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