Missing playlist help

Question

I'm running Windows Vista, and I have the latest iTunes and my iPod touch is up to date
I plugged my iPod in this morning when I got home from work like always, it did its sync like always. I added a song from my iTunes library to one of my playlists (remembering from the night before that I forgot to add it) and clicked sync. After the sync I was scrolling through my iTunes looking to play some songs from one of my favorite playlists. Well the playlist is now gone, it had about 20-30 songs on it, its gone from the iPod and iTunes. I didnt even do anything to this playlist before I synced and it wasnt the playlist I added the song to. I'm so angry because I don't remember exactly what songs were even on it to create another one. When I clicked on import playlist I did a search for it (the name being Mix 7) and nothing showed, as if it was never there. I've never had any issues with my iTunes or iPod so I'm at a loss. Please tell me this playlist isn't gone forever and if there is another way to retrieve it or at least retrieve the song names so I can create another one

Answer 1

All iTunes playlists are stored inside the database file iTunes Library.itl. Unless you explicity get around to exporting them there won't be an m3u/xls/etc. version of the playlist to reimport.
Hopefully the playlist in question was in your library the last time you updated iTunes. If so here is a way to recover it:
Close iTunes.
Hold down shift as you click the icon to start iTunes.
Keep holding shift until asked to create or choose a library.
Open the most recent version of your library from the Previous iTunes Libraries folder.
Locate and export the last known version of the list
Close iTunes.
Use the shift-start-iTunes method to go back to your current library.
Import the playlist.
Er.
That's it.
For the future see this User Tip for a backup strategy.
tt2