Can't drag and drop music within iTunes playlist

What T F Apple - why can't you leave anything alone - this is all extortion driven - "Buy a New iPod" is the answer. I have a classic and it will not transfer music, cannot drop and drag, I have to sync the whole volume of music - I DO NOT WANT TO DO THAT!!!

I create a new playlist, I buy 70 new songs, you ******* get $100 or so from me, good for you, now I can't do a simple drag and drop onto my iPod Classic. I Google for "help" I shouldn't need and every answer is gibberish...it won't even let me create a new playlist on my iPod Classic. I can sync but the playlists on my MacMini do not even show up any more. Every time you tweak Tunes you mess it up, it's never a fix, and after 10 years of Apple I'm fed up with it.

Inadinad, I don't know if you got an answer to this yet, but I was having the same problem. What made it really annoying is that I used to be able to do it, but for some reason, at some point I lost the ability to drag and drop to change the order of songs in the playlist. I searched and searched with no avail, but after playing a bit, I came up with what might be a simple solution.

There are a couple of places to set it properly, depending on the view you're looking at. But basically, make sure you have the sort order set to "Playlist Order". If you have it set to anything else (Name, Genre, Year, etc.), when you try to drag and drop files to reorder them in a playlist, the file will just jump back to it's original position. (Actually, it won't move at all.) If you have it set to "Playlist Order", you'll be able to drag and drop to your heart's content. Also, it doesn't matter whether the sort order is Ascending or Descending. Hope it works for you.

If the content that was in your iTunes library no longer shows then see Empty/corrupt iTunes library after upgrade/crash.

If the issue is that the device previously synced with a different computer and you're getting an erase and sync warning when you try to add content see Recover media from an iPod. Otherwise you should be able to manage a synced device by editing the playlists that it syncs with, or a manually managed device using drag and drop.

tt2

Nothing has really change regarding the ability to sort in different ways, including manually. And you can manually sort smart playlists.

In the playlist, make sure you are showing it using the Songs view, to show a plain list with columns. Then, click the heading of the leftmost column. This is the column with sequential number below (and no actual column title). This sorts the list in "playlist order," and allows the drag/drop of items to manually re-order them.

As a test, create a brand new regular playlist in your iTunes library. Then, go to your iTunes music library. Right-click a random song and Add to Playlist -> [name of your test playlist]. Repeat this so that your test playlist has about ten songs. In the test playlist, try manually re-ordering songs.

Hello,

I am having the same issue with my playlists as the others. I have followed the suggestions and the issue still occurs. Its weird because all of the playlists I have created prior were all editable and were able to move around within the playlist now everything is locked.

If I recall, if iTunes is currently in Shuffle mode you cannot manually move songs to a different order. Make sure Shuffle is off, and if you're able to sort things how you like remember to select "Copy to Play Order" when done to save the order (Ctrl-/ right-click on playlist name).

I am having the exact same problem. No matter WHAT I do, I cannot drag and drop any songs on my classic iPod to a playlist that I've made on there. I need to add extra songs to a playlist I've already created – simple, I have been doing this for over a decade by dragging and dropping files – and iTunes is now making it impossible to do so. Please help!

Is the playlist on the device a regular one or a smart one?

Is iTunes set to sync to the device or is it set up to be manually managed?

Are you trying to add any songs downloaded from the Apple Music service?

tt2

I had the same problem. This may help:

Does the song come up with an exclamation mark next to the name? If so it may be that iTunes can no longer locate the song in its system. If that's the case then i found it was because i had dragged & copied all my songs to another folder which made iTunes think that i had deleted them. Simply drag all your songs from the folder you had them in to somewhere like Documents, Downloads ect.. any original folders on your pc and then go back to iTunes and drag the over to your playlist, that should then work! if it hasn't then you may need to double click the song before dragging it over to play it. I hope this helps!

I have a large collection of classical music saved in my iTunes library. I have it organized by composer and I once had a folder for each composer and playlists within the folders for each piece--symphony, sonata, opera, etc. I had to replace my hard drive, and now I have to reconstruct from my library (saved on an external drive) all the folders and playlists.

I CAN NO LONGER DO IT. Something has changed so that not only can I not drag and drop groups of files into playlists or drag and drop playlists into folders, but I can only create as many folders as FIT ON ONE SCREEN--no scrolliing, so no more right-clicking to create folders and playlists. I have to click on the file menu, then on another thing and on another thing each time I want a new playlist or folder. This is INTOLERABLE.

Click on the very first column header with the numbers.

You might find my script ImportFolderStructure useful.

tt2