ITunes & Playlists (unchecked items)

Question

Here is the story.
- I have over 20,000 MP3s in my total library.
- I have many genres
- I rate songs to target portable playlists (rock, Irish, etc)
- I have two iPods (classic 30GB & Nano 4GB)
- I am planning to get the Touch 32GB
- My 30GB I take to work for all day music
- My Nano is in the car for audiobooks
- I have two airport express devices hooked up to speakers
- I have a computer in the family room which accesses the main systems which shares its playlists.
Here is the challenge:
I use checked items to manage what loads down to the iPods. I often get new music and don't want to have to constantly playlist it and try to work it into my main lists. I have been using the sync checked items since the ipods cannot hold the entire library.
I would like to have my itunes system play tunes in a shuffle regardless of their checked status. checked items, as itunes is designed, are to manage what gets synced, not shuffled. It would be great if a preference was set in itunes to toggle checked items in the shuffle - after all, it holds the entirety of the library. This is now coming to a head for me now with christmas. I want my itunes to play christmas shuffles, but do not want them to sync to the ipods.
I have read posts going back years about how to do this and that with checked items, but it really looks to me like a workaround for a simple feature addition to itunes. I don't look forward to creating specific itunes playlists for each ipod, especially with a third one on the way. If Apple wants to also own the playlist at home space, they need to give us a few more options about how to control what plays and what syncs since they are not the same uses.

Answer 1

I have exactly the same request for change. When a playlist is created, be it either static or dynamic, it can contain both selected and unselected items. What iTunes should do is just (have at least an option to) play all of the songs regardless of them being checked or unchecked. This seems quite a simple feature.
I (and so it seems the topic opener) use the checkmark for syncing purpose only.
I think a workaround can be as follows:
- Create a playlist, e.g. 'Do Not Sync', and let it contain all of your unselected songs
* unfortunately there is no way to filter/search for/sort on unselected items as far as I know, so this can be quite a hassle. Instead of making this playlist for all your songs, you may do it gradually for each playlist you create
- Create a normal playlist containing the desired songs
* this playlist can contain both selected and unselected items
- Select all in this playlist and invoke Check Selection
- Whenever you want to sync, first remember to open the playlist 'Do Not Sync'
- Select all and invoke Uncheck Selection
- Start the sync
All this hassle can quite easily be solved when iTunes would have an option to play songs regardless of them being selected or unselected.
Cheers,
Stoic
//Message was edited by: Stoic18
Correction on the statement "unfortunately there is no way to filter/search for/sort on unselected items". By using creative smart playlist it seems you actually can filter all your unselected items as mentioned @ http://www.macworld.com/article/134675/2008/07/checkuncheckitunes.html :
If you’d like to create a playlist that contains only unchecked songs in your iTunes library, do this.
Create a smart playlist that reads:
Playlist is Music
Make sure that Match Only Checked Items is enabled and close it. Give it the name All Checked.
Create a second smart playlist that reads:
Playlist is not All Checked
Genre is not Podcast
Playlist is not Movies
Playlist is not TV Shows
Playlist is not Audiobooks
Do not enable the Match Only Checked Items option and save this smart playlist as Unchecked. Now when you want to easily see what is and isn’t checked, visit these two playlists.
Message was edited by: Stoic18