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Restore a lost playlist on iTunes 11

Guys. Need a help in restoring my lost playlist. This is the scenario. My primary iPhone 5S is synced/backed up in my Mac iTunes 11.1.3, it works fine, no issues. An other iPhone 3GS which was not earlier synced/backed up with my Mac, synced up newly today. I am intending it to use 3GS as only an iPod. So restored the playlists from iTunes onto 3GS. So, iPhone 5S and iPhone 3GS are synced up under the same Mac iTunes. And then came the accident! I deleted a playlist from the iPhone 3GS unknowingly and synced it back with the Mac iTunes. And now that playlist is gone from iTunes also.


Searched online to restore the lost playlist and followed this fix - http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_recover_lost_itunes_playlists. But it didnt restore the playlist, instead created duplicate of all other existing playlists in iTunes. Additionally it removed all my original setting/preferences for my primary iPhone 5S also (music,app,videos,books etc). Those tabs in iTunes for iPhone 5S were all blank, so it is like i am setting up the phone new. So i put back the removed "iTunes Library.itl" file back in the iTunes library folder, now i am able to see the my iPhone 5S settings/preferences again. Thats a sigh of relief. The reason i give this info is that the above fix didnt work, so i want anyone giving a similar fix to keep that in mind.


So now, how do i restore the lost playlist on iTunes? One saving grace is that the lost playlist is still in my iPhone 5S (i didnt sync this phone yet and not planning to sync with iTunes until i find a fix. however i took a backup with iTunes just in case). And when i connect iPhone 5S to my Mac, the lost playlist doesn't show up in iTunes (the playlist shows up only in 5S), so not sure how that playlist can be exported from 5S to iTunes.


Any help appreciated much..

Posted on Jan 12, 2014 3:14 PM

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15 replies

Jan 30, 2014 7:43 PM in response to Chris CA

Sidelined with things.. finally got to catch this up.. Chris, Your solution worked perfect!!! I was able to Export the playlist from iPhone 5S and Imported it back to iTunes. Now back to what i wanted. This saved me big time.


And just to add.... the exact tab to get to the playlist names on the phone is - "On This iPhone" tab. For a while, i was scrambling to find the playlist name.


Thanks much, Chris!!

Jul 8, 2014 4:35 PM in response to farralbo17

Hi Chris CA


Thanks for that. I just recovered a lost playlist that took me days to make.


Two things to note:


1 - You have to be REALLY VERY QUICK with this. As soon as you plug the device in that has the playlist you have lost, iTunes will start to sync and will wipe it from that device!

2 - With the above in mind, I did a dry run on another device, so I was not left wondering what to do. Lucky I did.


I exported mine to .TXT BTW. I thought it would be quicker, since I only had seconds before it was deleted.


I now intend to export my playlists to TXT so they will be independently backed up to my time capsule. This was a habit when a Windows PC user. Silly me, I thought I could get everything back individually from the time capsule, which you can't.


Cheers


Tony

Jul 19, 2014 2:00 AM in response to leetrigg

Hi leetrig,


I kind of have the same problem as you had.


I deleted a several playlists from my iphone 4s because i needed some space. When i arrived home i synced my iphone with my iTunes library and then they got deleted from there as well.


I don't have the playlists stored on any other iphone like you did...


Can you help me out on this one??


cheers.

Oct 12, 2014 8:31 PM in response to Tony Tapir

The synch (and the erase) happens almost instantaneously (been there/done that/got the t-shirt). To prevent, before plugging in the device that has the saved playlists:


Go to iTunes menu -> Edit -> Preferences -> Devices -> Select Prevent iPods, iPads, iphones from synching automatically.


Also to "select the device on the left of iTunes" was not intuitively obvious, at least not to me.


When the device is plugged in, there is a small triangular icon to the left of the device. Select that icon and the playlists on that device will be displayed. Then right click on the playlist to export as others have indicated above. I made a folder "iTunes playlists" and exported all of my playlists to that folder after my well-meaning 13 yo son deleted 5 of my most listened to playlists:)


To import back into your main iTunes library:


File -> Library -> Import Playlist (from the location you saved to from your export).

Feb 23, 2015 4:41 PM in response to leetrigg

I had the same problem. On my iPad I wanted to play a playlist but somehow I deleted all the songs on it. I synced it back to my iMac but that deleted all the songs on the playlist on the iMac. On the iMac I quit out of iTunes and then restored the Music directory using Time Machine from yesterday. I logged out and then in and started up iTunes. All was well. I then attached the iPad and did a sync. Everything worked.


Of course this only works if you have an ongoing backup using Time Machine.

Feb 24, 2015 5:31 PM in response to P.Brimacombe

P.Brimacombe wrote:


I had the same problem. On my iPad I wanted to play a playlist but somehow I deleted all the songs on it. I synced it back to my iMac but that deleted all the songs on the playlist on the iMac. On the iMac I quit out of iTunes and then restored the Music directory using Time Machine from yesterday. I logged out and then in and started up iTunes. All was well. I then attached the iPad and did a sync. Everything worked.


Of course this only works if you have an ongoing backup using Time Machine.

You should restore only what to you need because something else may get deleted.

In this case, you should have only store the /Music/iTunes/ folder, not the entire /Music/ folder.

Jun 1, 2015 11:17 PM in response to leetrigg

To clarify Linc's old response -- you CANNOT restore a single playlist using Time Machine or any other backup method.


What you can restore from Time Machine is your ENTIRE playlist and library XML collection. If you haven't added anything to iTunes since your deletion, and you don't mind losing any other edits or work, this might suffice.


But there is no way to surgically restore a single playlist. Yeah, bad design!


HOWEVER, if you have the playlist on an iDevice (iTunes, iPhone) you can export it then import it again:

http://osxdaily.com/2014/07/02/transfer-playlist-from-ios-to-itunes/

Aug 18, 2015 11:44 AM in response to Chris CA

Chris A, I need serious help. I dowloaded the latest version of itunes and it completey wipes out my library, all my music and playlists. Apple was able to restore all the songs back using a previous itunes library dated august 10 but since we moved things around now all my playlist songs have exclamation point next to them and these were all externally downloaded....most of them are still in my downloads folder but they are all still intact on my iphone...so far apple has been no help getting these to work and I've been impatiently waiting....I tried to plug in my iphone and right click on the playlist on my phone and it does not give an option to export, only play/shuffle/play next or add to up next....


please help xmetalfirexx@hotmail.com thank you 🙂

Restore a lost playlist on iTunes 11

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