iTunes11 - need help with import/export playlists

[noeddeon]

I'm hoping some of the expert iTunes aficionados would help me with something I'm having a problem with.

I had a fairly large music library (70,000+), but there were quite a lot of duplicates. When I did the 'show duplicates' it came up with over 10,000+ songs. Since there was no easy way of removing the duplicates (apparently had to do it one by one), I decided to upgrade to iTunes 11 and in the process deleted the old music library and import again into iTunes 11. This actually helped in removing duplicates as I am only now showing about 2,000 (actually not really dupes as some are live recordings or from 'best of albums' etc).

While I fixed the problem with duplicates, my dilemma now is I lost all the songs in the various playlist I have created over the years. Is there a way of getting my playlists back? Before the upgrade (and deletion of old library) I did export the playlists and library files (I think they are .txt and .xml files). Just wondering if there is anyway of getting the playlists back. Obviously something I overlooked when I did the upgrade.

Also, I have not synced my ipad yet which have these old playlists. Wondering if I sync whether the songs will automatically go back into the playlists in iTunes.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Gadzooks]

They are txt files. have you tried importing them? It's in the File menu ( top left) -> add to library--> import playlists

[noeddeon]

Yes tried importing the playlist and the playlist TITLE all show up, BUT my songs are not listed in the playlist. Is it because during the (re)importing it placed the music files in a different location????
FYI ... I kept the new itunes library music folder in the exact same location as before i.e. C:\my music\music

[Gadzooks]

The only thing I can think of then is to backup all your database files to a folder and temporarily put the old ones back in ( if you kept them) but I'm not sure if your original problem with duplicates will return. I don't know enough about it.

[cjmnews]

Syncing your iPad will NOT put the songs back into the playlists.

The re-import may have moved the files from My Music\Music\iTunes Music to My Music\Music\iTunes Media. This may make your playlists fail to have songs after importing them.

Rolling back to the original library is an option, but you may need to rename the folder where iTunes keeps the music (the opposite of the above) for that to work. The original library should be in the Previous iTunes Libraries\iTunes Library <date>.itl where the date is the day you upgraded. Copy the file to the iTunes folder, delete iTunes Library.itl and then remove the date from the itl file you copied.

You will have your duplicates though. Then you can try using the How to isolate missing tracks (exclamation mark) method to see if you can delete the duplicates that way.