Playlist Order Problems

I'm having trouble setting songs in a playlist in a certain order. I've tried dragging from library to playlist in the order I want - it makes order random. I've tried using the track number on the info page once the songs are in the playlist and that's not working either. Any suggestions?

Right click on the playlist name in the source panel, and click "Copy to Play Order" . . . that will put it in the order you have it in iTunes, onto your iPod.

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Playlist Order problem

Long, long ago, I made playlists of about 100 of my old mix tapes. These were made for me by my friends, or by myself, with hours put into selecting not only the songs, but the order of the songs. Some songs just flow into one another - and some really don't go together, even if they're on the same mix. Then I threw away the cassettes (who needs those?).
On the iTunes on my computer, the order of the playlists was always correct, and stayed as it was. The order on the iPod wasn't always correct, but I attributed that to me working on the songs, maybe resorting them in iTunes when I synced - but I could always go back to iTunes to see the right order, or set them to the right order by clicking the far left column heading.
Now I purchased a bunch of songs from iTunes Plus, and I signed up for iTunes Match (which was apparently the wrong way to do things...), and a vast number of my songs were simply removed from my playlists. A huge pain, but I figured I could recover those songs from the playlists on my iPod (as long as I don't sync until I manually look through all the playlists).
I have about 18,000 songs in iTunes - just letting you know the scope of the situation. It wasn't just those mix tape playlists that lost songs, it was also others (some of which had 100-200 songs) that lost songs (still in my library, just not in the playlists). Anyway, a HUGE manual task to recover the playlists.
That seems to be going well, but the order of the playlists doesn't exist on the iPod. And now it looks like the order of the playlists in iTunes itself is random, and I can't recover the original order.
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Matthew

Matthew,
iTunes has never had the concept of "locking" a playlist. Any playlist is subejct ot getting accidentally re-ordered, and any change made to the library (such as deleting a song) unavoidably affects every playlist which has the song.
It is frustrating for mixtapers who want to get the list into final form and preserve it. Sooner or later something will mess up your lists. Welcome to the club.
If you know ahead of time, you can make a separate record of the playlist order, either using Print, or using Export. If that didn't happen, you can try going to your last full library backup. Other than that, you can enjoy the songs in some new sequence!

Playlist ordering problem

I have created a smart playlist that automatically adds the cd's I ripped to my library.
I want the last added cd to be on top of the playlist. That works by ordering the playlist based on the "added" row.
The thing is that, as cd's are ripped beginning with the first song, the cd songs order is upside down.
If a cd has 10 songs I first hear the tenth song, then the ninth and so on.
How can this be fixed?

Unfortunately iTunes does not provide the kind of sorting facilities you would get a report generating program or a database.
You can't specify a customised hierachical sort, first date added and within that sort by album and track order.
In fact becuase the date added column is actually date and time added, it wouldn't work anyway unless you could restrict it to just the date.
You will have to find some work around such as limiting the number of items in your playlist and sepecifying most recently added. Then you can sort in the normal way.
So might have something like:
Match the following rule - not checked.
Limit to - say 30 items Selected by most recently added.
Live updating checked.
If you wanted to exclude music downloaded from the iTunes store, you can use the "Kind" column. Downloaded tracks are "Protected AAC audio file"

Problems gifting playlist - order randomized and Error 1008

I can purchase music fine, so I know my account is indeed working.
But when I try to gift a playlist via the iTunes Store, 2 errors keep occuring:
1. Track order gets randomized. (Not that it'd matter, but I don't have shuffle checked.) Each time I try clicking the "Give Playlist" button, the list opens in the Store in a different random track order, numbered incorrectly. It's only an issue because these tracks need to play in order.
2. More important, I can't finalize the purchase. I get all the way to the last screen, after entering my password, but when I finally click "Buy Gift" I get this error popup:
"*We could not complete your iTunes Store request. An unknown error occurred (1008). There was an error in the iTunes Store.* Please try again later."
This has been happening all day -- even though I can purchase songs for myself just fine.
What should I do? This is time sensitive. I'm doing this through iTunes rather than burning a CD and giving it away because I feel strongly about paying for music. Bummer not to have any info on this.
Thanks for any help!

Well at least we're not alone. I just sent a support request to Apple. Not sure if it makes any difference, but maybe if everyone does it'd be of use? http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/contact.html?form=el&topic=Express%20Lane%20 inquiry
BTW, does anyone know why the playlist order gets randomly changed when I try to gift a playlist? It's confounding, I keep having to cancel and try again until, randomly, the order is right -- which can take quite a while with 5 tracks!

The playlist order on iTunes does not match the playlist order on my iPhone!!

Okay, I have been browsing discussion threads for the past two hours and nothing seems to be working!
I have essentially two playlists that I would like on my iPhone. One is the "purchased" folder that is automatcially created when you buy a song. I have it arranged by "date added". The second playlist I want is called "music library"... there I have simply copy and pasted all my songs into a playlist and sorted them by "play count". However, no matter what I do (ie. switching the order from starting from the "lowest play count" to the "highest play count", starting new smart playlists with the "playlist is music" criteria, and right clicking the playlist and clicking "copy to play order") NOTHING SEEMS TO BE WORKING!! Please help me, I just want them in the order I have them on iTunes.
Thank you!

I had the same problem but got my playlists synced perfectly a few nights ago. i did a few things at a time so i'm not sure which exactly did it. my playlists were coming up in reverse order on my iPhone. Most played appeared starting with the least of the most played. With the iPhone plugged into the computer, the iPhone appears in itunes. When i expanded it, i saw eclaimation marks near a few of the smart playlists. the error message was something along the lines of "could not sync playlist becuase it relies on another playlist that could not be found".
Now my smart playlists still had the fix from way back when you had to add a condition saying playlist is Music, and it seemed that the playlists "Music" not being on the device confused it somewhat. so i modified my smart playlists to not rely on any other smart playlists, unsynced and resynced those playlists from my phone and it all came up perfectly from then on, no problems for the last few days.
I think it's an ios bug as syncing another phone on older ios4 got the playlist order perfectly before all of these changes i made. Hope that helps someone, it was driving me nuts for weeks.

How do I randomize a playlist order in iTunes 11.0.1.12?

I recently updated my computer software (iTunes included, obviously) and have come to realize that this new version does not give me the abilities that the previous versions have. I wiped my iPod clean to start from scratch, as it was full and I was hoping to put newer material on it, and when I went to load a playlist and shuffle it for playback order, I realized that the shuffle button, which is what I used before, is no longer available. How do I shuffle a playlist order or track order or whatever, within a playlist, so I could copy it to the play order and sync it to my iPod?

I'm still not sure what this option (to shuffle a Playlist and then Sync that to the iPod) was or where it was in iTunes 10. This is despite your question having been raised by other people.
Surely, since you can shuffle a Playlist on an iPod, it's not necessary to shuffle it before Syncing, is it?

ITunes 7.2 Problem: Song Order Problem

Equipment Specs:
IPOD -- First Generation, 1 G size, Firmware ver # 1.1.5
ITunes -- Ver # 7.2.0.34
Problem
I recently updated to the above version of ITunes. I also recently reset/erased all my songs (no podcasts or nothing else)from my IPOD.
I then reloaded just songs to my pod using the drag and drop method from the music file. I then re-arranged the songs in my desired order.
I then disonnected the pod and exited ITunes.
When I later restarted ITunes with the pod connected, my song order had changed. With the pod still open in ITunes, I am no longer able to change the play order position. As say, move song #45 to position #2 and etc.
Has something changed as I was always able to do this prior to updating ITunes and the pod ?
Was this caused by updating ITunes to the newest version?
Is there a solution to be able to manage the order of your songs as before ?
Can I use a 6.0 version of Itunes inorder to regain this song order problem. I was always able to use this function in a previous version.
Wished I never would have updated to 7.2 from whatever I had. I really should have know better.
Thx
Arc

Solved my problem by reloading ITunes Version 7.1.1.5. Now I can accomplish what I want to do.
Here's an associated thread:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=981696&tstart=0

Artist sort order problem

Hi.
I have music sync'd via iTunes Match from my laptop to my iPad and to my iPhone. The names and order appear correct on both the laptop and on the iPad but on the iPhone several artists are either shown in all lower case or the last name will be used by the sort, rather than the first.
I've reset the artist, album artist and sort artist tags to different names (and they show up correctly then on the iPhone) and then set them back, but the problem remains.
I'm thinking that the iPhone has a corrupt file somewhere - but how can I reset that without losing everything on the phone?
A factory reset and restore from iCloud results in the same problem.
Any ideas?
Thanks guys.
--Cynan.

I also have an Artist sort order problem. While the circumstances are quite different from yours, I wonder if it's due to a similar corruption problem. I don't use iTunes Match. I found Kenny G listed under letter T.

Iphoto Book ordering problems

After 3 weeks of constant attempts I feel I need to see if anyone out there has a thought on why I receive a return email from my book order "Problems with your order - you have not been charged etc etc"
I have done everything possible from deleting photos, trying EVERY theme, deleting maps, background photos. I have corresponded by email with the Apple help, and I have spent about an hour at the Genius Bar at Apple to see if anyone can solve my problem. Everyone has comeback with "we don't know"
I work with a MacBook Pro Mac OS X 10.6.4, have plenty of memory, all software is up to date.
I am just about to reinitialise my hard disk, install iLife 11 and make the book again, as I can see no other way to try to get this book ordered. Hopefully, oh every so hopefully this will solve my problem.
Any guru help?

Since yesterday there have been many reports from all over the world of people unable to buy a book or any print products from Apple.
Apple has to fix this on the servers.
See for example this link: Re: Trying to buy book I created. When I hit "checkout" nothing happens. It's not like Apple to not want to make more m…

How can I get my ipad to reflect the same playlist order that appears on my computer?

How can I get my ipad to reflect the same playlist order that appears on my computer? My computer has the exact desired order of playlist, but once the system is synced, the ipad does not reflect the propper order.

In iTunes with your playlist shown in the correct order, right-click on the playlist name in the side-bar and click Copy to Play Order. Enable the side-bar with CTRL+S if necessary. Sync. Note also that the column you are sorting on should have the small triangle pointing upwards, otherwise the songs will play in the reverse order. You may also find that you need to first remove, and then add back the playlist to the device if syncing doesn't update it properly. See this post for more.
tt2

Field order problem I think

I just burned through 10 dvds and they all look terrible. There are all these wavy lines. Is this a field order problem? If so, how do I correct it. I have missed my deadline and I am in big trouble. Please help.
Thanks

I just burned through 10 dvds and they all look
terrible. There are all these wavy lines. Is this a
field order problem? If so, how do I correct it. I
have missed my deadline and I am in big trouble.
DV formats ALWAYS use field 1 dominance -- LOWER FIELD FIRST!
Since your content was created in a graphics program and not a DV camcorder, be sure to read through: http://www.greatdv.com/video/fields.htm
BTW, It's ALWAYS the best idea to create a disk image out of iDVD (an option under FILE). Verify the image plays correctly with Apple's Disk Utility and then make the actual burns to writable media with Apple's Disk Utility or Roxio's Toast. Use quality DVD-R media (Verbatim or Maxell) and burn at 4x speed or lower.
F Shippey

Sorting Playlist order?

This may be a ridiculous question but can you sort a playlist in iTunes that will show up other than in the order a song was added or track listing? I've tried reserving a playlist order so the most recent tracks added appear at the beginning of the list but it won't keep that order once synced to the ipod. Basically I'm just trying to keep the most recent songs on top. I'm thinking there's an easy way to do this and I'm just missing it.
Any advice is appreciated, sorry if this is a very newb question,
Thank you,
Jason

In your smart playlist settings, set a limit for the number of tracks in the list (but make it higher than you'll need if you don't actually want a limit), then pick the order you want the tracks to be in from the "selected by" drop down.
For some reason this hasn't been working for play count (and so presumably might not work for some other options, if definitely works if you arrange by album), so try turning off live updating on a top 25 type list.

Playlist order on Nano

I notice that I can set a playlist order in Itunes in various ways (using the arrows at the top of the columns). Howeverm the order in Itunes does not transfer to the Nano. Anyone know how to do this?
p.s. I think the order is governed my the Music folder directly. But does this mean you must select a "global" order for all plylists?

Well, I have done that - pretty intuitive actually and it is easy to manipulate in iTunes. That is a strength.
But now I can't seem to get a playlist onto the Nano. I select 'Music' on the iPod in iTunes, drag a playlist from iTunes (which was created and named on iTunes as discussed), but end up with only the songs - no playlist - on the Nano .
I have the latest SW on iTunes and iPod.
Thanks...Gary

What's changed in Nano world, my playlist order?

A few weeks ago my 8gig mini nano thing with clock and all the stuff you could ever want messed up my playlist. I have "copy playlist order" and even copied my playlists to see if that would work but no, the ipod just plays like it's in shuffle mode. Shuffle is off, shake to shuffle is off.

Well I fixed it, ONLY by restoring back to factory settings. My guess is that the lastest iTunes update has a bug in it. So i won't be updating my ipod for a while. Why break something that works.

Keeping my itunes playlist order after I sync to iPod Nano 7th Gen

So I created a playlist but I am having trouble keeping the order of songs after I sync. I have tried rating them as well but as soon as I sync, Alphabetical order is what I get. Any thoughts?

In iTunes, go to your playlist. On the playlist, click on its column header row at the far left end, above the column with sequential numbers below. That sorts the playlist by playlist order, and you can change the song order by dragging songs around on the list. You may have done this already.
If you sync this playlist to the iPod, it should appear in that order on the iPod.
If it does not, you may not be looking at the playlist on the iPod. If you select the list of All Songs on the iPod, it will be in alphabetical order. Even if you only have one playlist synced to the iPod, the All Songs list is not the playlist. If you select the playlist on the iPod, it should be in playlist order.

Playlist Order Problems

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