How can I get iTunes to recognize previoiusly downloaded podcasts?

Question

I lost a subscription and had to resubscribe to a podcast. In the podcast subscription I see a list of previous podcasts THAT I HAVE ALREADY DOWNLOADED and stored in the podcast directory. iTunes won't recognize them and proceeds to download new copies if I click the "get podcast" button. Is there a way to make iTunes realize that I already have a copy?

amazing dave, I tried your technique and it didn't work. iTunes simply does not want to recognize the already downloaded files and mark the podcasts as received.

Answer 1

If the old copies are showing under the same Podcast grouping as the ones it's trying to redownload, set your podcast options (Edit menu, Preferences, Podcast tab) to "Do Nothing" when new episodes are available (you can reset it however you like later, but for now, you'll want to prevent it from downloading). Pull up your Podcast library, and hit the Refresh button to make all of your Podcasts recheck for episodes that have not been downloaded. Now, _just_ for the duplicate episodes that you don't want to have continue showing up, highlight them and hit the Delete button. They will no longer show up (you'd probably have to resubscribe to get them back, so make sure you don't delete any new eps that you haven't downloaded yet), so they shouldn't ever try to redownload. I've used this trick to clear out duplicate entries from a podcast where all of the back catalog suddenly showed different release dates (so they registered as new content), and to clear out unwanted episodes from podcasts where I only want a few specific episodes.