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What does "Check Selection " do in iTunes?

I have a lot of old Christmas CDs that I ripped to iTunes. I made sure they were all labeled as Holiday under Genre. I then created smart playlist for all Holiday music. I go to play the music and none of these albums played. They were all grayed out.

So I then went to albums list and tried to play some of them as well. Nothing played. Yikes.

Than I read an article that said try the Check Selection option. I had to go thru all 30 albums and click on Check Selection. Thank fully it worked. I can play the songs in the playlist.

But what the heck is “Check Selection”? What does it do and what is it for? Why would this even be an option if you ripped your own music to iTunes? Very confused. Glad I haven’t gotten rid of all my CDs.

Thanks to anyone who can explain this to me.

iPhone 6s, iOS 10

Posted on Dec 9, 2016 12:09 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Dec 9, 2016 12:20 PM

In the songs layout you may see checkboxes next to each track. The check/uncheck selection options simply check or uncheck each tick box for each track in the current selection of tracks. You select everything with Ctrl+A, or range by clicking one track, then shift when clicking another to select everything in between. You can also select multiple albums in the same way, or add/remove from a range with Ctrl+click.


Some people choose to use the checkboxes to control what does and does not sync to their device, however as you've found this makes it harder to play the unchecked items when you actually want to, and is no use if you have more than one device to manage. Personally I uncheck things like bonus interview tracks which I wouldn't normally want to listen to but keep in my library rather than discarding altogether.


tt2

3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 9, 2016 12:20 PM in response to Gator5000e

In the songs layout you may see checkboxes next to each track. The check/uncheck selection options simply check or uncheck each tick box for each track in the current selection of tracks. You select everything with Ctrl+A, or range by clicking one track, then shift when clicking another to select everything in between. You can also select multiple albums in the same way, or add/remove from a range with Ctrl+click.


Some people choose to use the checkboxes to control what does and does not sync to their device, however as you've found this makes it harder to play the unchecked items when you actually want to, and is no use if you have more than one device to manage. Personally I uncheck things like bonus interview tracks which I wouldn't normally want to listen to but keep in my library rather than discarding altogether.


tt2

What does "Check Selection " do in iTunes?

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