Mystery Podcasts Keep Showing Up in Smart Playlists

I use Smart Playlists to listen to Podcasts on my iPod Shuffles. It worked fine literally for years, but recently something changed.
Now when I make a Smart Playlist (I enter "Media Kind is Podcast")I get all my newly downloaded Podcasts, but I also get a list of about 50 podcasts that I deleted a long time ago. They are marked in the Smart Playlist as unavailable - iTunes says that it doesn't know where these Podcasts are located.
The problem is that they really don't exist at all. The original files are gone. They don't show up in Itunes (of course). They are also nowhere on my computer. I've done manual searches - looking through hundreds of folders where they might be located. I've also used the Windows Explorer Search feature to try to locate these files. They simply aren't anywhere on any of my hard drives. Therefore, I can't tell iTunes where they are located and I can't delete them. I can't delete them because they have already been deleted.
Yet, there is a reference to them in my iTunes library database file. There must be, or why would they keep showing up in a Smart Playlist? This is a real problem for me because it means I can't use Smart Playlists for my podcasts anymore.
Can anyone suggest a way to remove these podcast filenams from the iTunes database?
Thanks!
Doug

Hi, Katrina.
I just wanted to report back on what happened.
I created a new Smart Playlist with the parameters "Media Kind is Podcast", and just like always, I got a list of all my curent podcasts plus about fifty or so of these phantom podcasts.
I selected one of these phantom podcasts and tried Alt-Delete, but that didn't do anything. Just hitting Delete didn't do anything either. Nor did Ctrl-Delete. However, Shift-Delete worked like a charm. I got this message:
"Are you sure you want to remove the selected podcast from your iTunes library? This podcast will also be removed from any iPod or iPhone which synchronizes with your iTunes library."
I clicked on the "Remove" button (my options were "Remove" and "Cancel"). The podcast name vanished from the playlist and apparently it was also removed from the library database, because when I created another podcast Smart Playlist, that phantom podcast did not reappear.
I then went through the entire Smart Playlist and selected all of the phantom podcasts. I hit shift-delete, clicked on "Remove" and they all vanished and none of them returned. My Smart Playlists are back to normal and the problem is gone.
Apparently, Shift-Delete is the command for deleting podcasts (and songs, I assume) directly from a playlist. This works even if the orignal file has already been deleted and the listing is just a phantom listing in the database.
Whether Shift-Delete to delete directly from a playlist works on all computers, I don't know. It certainly worked on mine, which is a PC.
Thanks again, Katrina!
Doug

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Hi, Katrina.
I just wanted to report back on what happened.
I created a new Smart Playlist with the parameters "Media Kind is Podcast", and just like always, I got a list of all my curent podcasts plus about fifty or so of these phantom podcasts.
I selected one of these phantom podcasts and tried Alt-Delete, but that didn't do anything. Just hitting Delete didn't do anything either. Nor did Ctrl-Delete. However, Shift-Delete worked like a charm. I got this message:
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I clicked on the "Remove" button (my options were "Remove" and "Cancel"). The podcast name vanished from the playlist and apparently it was also removed from the library database, because when I created another podcast Smart Playlist, that phantom podcast did not reappear.
I then went through the entire Smart Playlist and selected all of the phantom podcasts. I hit shift-delete, clicked on "Remove" and they all vanished and none of them returned. My Smart Playlists are back to normal and the problem is gone.
Apparently, Shift-Delete is the command for deleting podcasts (and songs, I assume) directly from a playlist. This works even if the orignal file has already been deleted and the listing is just a phantom listing in the database.
Whether Shift-Delete to delete directly from a playlist works on all computers, I don't know. It certainly worked on mine, which is a PC.
Thanks again, Katrina!
Doug

Phantom songs showing up in smart playlists

When creating a smart playlist for a podcast recently, i noticed two songs showed up with that icon that says the file can't be found. I want to get rid of them, but I can't figure out where they are in my library. Apparently itunes still has these records in my library... somewhere, but the only place they show up is by matching the smart playlist search. Normal search, as in through the search box, doesn't turn them up.
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12 PowerBook G4, 1.33 GHz Mac OS X (10.3.9)
12 PowerBook G4, 1.33 GHz Mac OS X (10.3.9)
12 PowerBook G4, 1.33 GHz Mac OS X (10.3.9)
12 PowerBook G4, 1.33 GHz Mac OS X (10.3.9)
12 PowerBook G4, 1.33 GHz Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Mystery Podcasts Keep Showing Up in Smart Playlists

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