Party Shuffle will not operate

Question

I deleted all the songs in Party Shuffle, and now, the feature will no longer operate. Right now, Party Shuffle lists only one song from one playlist, and when I choose other sources from the source selection list located below the track listing window in an effort to get Party Shuffle to accept other songs, it consistently informs me "The playlist '[chosen source]' does not contain any songs playable by Party Shuffle. Are you sure you want to choose this playlist?" I receive this message regardless of which source I choose, whether it be my music library or one of my playlists, including the playlist containing the one track now listed. Answering "Cancel" or "Okay" to that dialog box only affects whether or not the chosen source is listed as the selected source. ("Cancel" leaves the source listed as it is, while "Okay" changes the source listed to the selected source, though without affecting the listing of the tracks, er, track.)
Changing the number of recently displayed or upcoming songs does nothing, nor does clicking the Shuffle button in the bottom right corner below the track listing window. As suggested in a similar post, I have selected and deselected the Crossfade Playback option in Preferences > Playback, and I have also selected and deselected the Party Shuffle option in Preferences > General, both to no avail. I have also quit and restarted iTunes, but that had no affect. Any ideas or suggestions? Is it possible somehow to reset Party Shuffle? And if I ultimately do have to perform a re-install of iTunes 7.0.2 to solve this problem, how can I do so without losing or adversely affecting my library or playlists? Thanks for any assistance.
Message was edited by: PaulGK

Answer 1

Never mind. I solved the problem when, just for the heck of it, I decided to select (by checkmark, not highlight) all of the tracks in my music library to see if that would make a difference. Yep, it made a big difference. In fact, it made all the difference. Apparently, tracks must be checked to be available for Party Shuffle, but you'd never know that from the "Creating a custom mix using Party Shuffle" entry in iTunes Help. There's no mention of that critical step at all. So that solves the mystery as to why I continued to receive that dialog box telling me that my source selection did not contain any songs playable by Party Shuffle. Yeah, no kidding: 'Cause I hadn't selected any tracks in the first place! Thanks a lot, whoever wrote that incomplete iTunes Help entry on how to use Party Shuffle. What a waste of time, frustration, and anxiety, all because of some poorly written documentation... sigh