Recently I accidentally deleted my "Purchased" music playlist on my
iTunes.  The problem is that I have since bought some music, so now
there is a new "Purchased" list with only 5 songs, rather than the
hundreds I've already bought.

Can anyone tell me how to restore my previous "Purchased" list in a
way that will also include my purchases since the deletion?

Apparently it can't be done. Somebody recently asked this question at
iLounge.com (see http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/ask-ilounge-9-28-06/
for their answer.)

The article does state that there is a workaround, but it is does have
limitations. I'll check to see if there is a better solution.

The only thing I can find are variations of the same work around:
Create a new protected AAC folder and do a search for "Purchased
Music" --but I think that will still have the limitations discussed in
the article above. Is there any way you can reinstall itunes to get
the original folder? You'd have to move all your purchased music (old
and new) to a folder on your hard drive and put them back.

Some time ago I've read this steps, provided by an Apple employee:
This solution apparently works...


http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1909833&#1909833

1. Open iTunes.
2. From the iTunes menu, select Preferences.
3. In the Preferences window, select the green Store icon.
4. In the Store pane, click the radio button labeled Buy Using a Shopping Cart.

If that doesn't work, the playlist will re-appear at your next
purchase. It will probably only contain that purchase and not you
previous purchases.
The 'Purchased' playlist, actually behaves as a normal playlist and
you can add all 'Protected AAC' files to it.

Okay.  Thanks, everbody.  I'll give it a whirl.

Please come back and let us know what works...!

Okay, for those of you (many, I suspect) who have made this same
error, I have hit upon a workaround that, at least for me, worked with
about 98% accuracy.

To begin with, I could not exactly replace the old "Purchased" list
and merge it with my new one, the way I wanted.  But there is a way to
effectively do the same thing.

Hearken to the tale.

First of all, kingal-ga is right when claiming that the Purchased list
is perceived -- minus its special icon -- by iTunes as just a normal
playlist.  So apparently if you delete it, accidentally or otherwise,
you can't retrieve it.  (If anybody figures out how to do so, please
expatiate below.)

Studying the situation, I realized one important fact:  when you buy a
song off the iTunes service, it'll come with the "year" as part of the
info.  But if you rip the song off a CD (or load it into your iTunes
library from some of your mp3s) this usually does not happen.

So this is the workaround:

1.  Take your new "Purchased" list and copy all those songs to a
newly-created playlist, "New Playlist."

2.  Go back to your "Library."  Click on the "YEAR" tab to view them
in ascending order by year.  At least for me, about 98% of the songs
WITHOUT a year were added by me personally and not purchased from
iTunes.  That leaves the bottom half of this list, which are almost
all the songs I bought from iTunes.

3.  Highlight that bottom part of the list and copy it over to "New Playlist."

4.  Delete your old "Purchased" and re-name "New Playlist" as "Purchased."

5.  Reorder your new "Purchased" list by date acquired.

Presto!

This will effectively do the same thing as I originally wanted (with
an error rate, at least in my case, of about 2%), and will include
both the old and the new purchases.

Hard to believe the programming oversight on Apple's part!

I hope this will help some other poor wight.

Thanks Gnossie, I bet this will be very useful to other folks in the future!