How to fix duplicate bookmarks issue once and for all??
I'm using the latest version of Firefox (89.0) on both of my Windows 7 computers as well as on my iPhone. I have this really annoying glitch where I'll bookmark a page, and Firefox will occasionally duplicate that bookmark hundreds of times. I've gone in and deleted the duplicates, but then the problem re-occurs, so I'm trying to figure out how to finally fix this! I've already spent several hours looking through your help forums and trying to fix it, but nothing seems to work. Here's what I've done:
I turned off sync on all my devices. I also noticed that I had the iCloud synch extension on one of my computers, so I removed that, since I read that might cause some issues. Then I went and cleaned up the bookmarks on one of my computers, deleting all the duplicate entries, and I exported an HTML version of my bookmarks to my computer and also created a backup .json file. I refreshed Firefox on that computer. And I changed my sync password, since I read somewhere that that would supposedly force my old data to be deleted from Firefox's server.
Then I turned sync back on on that one computer, hoping that the latest version of my bookmarks that were on that computer would now update to Firefox's server. But instead of replacing the old bookmarks file in the cloud, it simply added back the old duplicate bookmarks to my computer (which apparently never got deleted from Firefox servers, despite the password change). Super frustrating. Isn't there a way to force a one-way sync, so the version of the bookmarks file that I have locally -- which has the latest changes -- takes priority??
I then tried going to "Import bookmarks from HTML," hoping that the version I had previously saved would replace this bad, outdated version I had downloaded from the server, but that didn't seem to do anything (I guess import only adds new bookmarks but doesn't delete existing bookmarks?). Could I import the json file instead? If so, how do I do that? I've considered deleting all my bookmarks and then importing the html file again to see if that fixes it, but it looks like the html file doesn't include the bookmarks on my toolbar. Is that correct? If so, I don't want to lose them.
Not sure what this is so glitchy and so difficult to fix. Can someone please help?
Izabrano rješenje
Note that you need to reset the password of the Sync account to remove the data on the server and not simply change it.
Are all devices desktop devices or are mobile devices as well connected to Sync ?
Syncing bookmarks, especially to a mobile device, can cause places.sqlite getting corrupted.
On a desktop computer you should be able to recover by restoring an unaffected JSON backup, but that isn't possible on a mobile device.
If you use Sync then best is to reconnect one device at the time and wait for the initial Sync to finish before connecting another device once you have fixed the bookmarks.
You can install the About Sync extension in Firefox 72 and newer on desktop to check what data is stored on the Sync server via the about:sync page provided by this extension.
Close and restart Firefox to access the about:sync page added by this extension (see the about:about page for possible about pages).
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When you cleaned out the clutter from one system, and reset the sync data, that was a good job. But, you did not clean out the data from the others in the sync.
Repeat when you did before. But clean out all profiles/systems before using sync again.
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But sync was still turned off on all my other devices, so the only place this computer was syncing with was the server. Why wouldn't the latest changes I had made on my computer take priority in the sync?
Sync shares data. If you do something (edit, add, remove . . .), that is sent to the servers. And then to all members of the sync. Remember that the other members still have the bad data.
Sorry, but this still isn’t making sense. To reiterate, all the other members (my other computer and my iPhone) have their sync functionality temporarily turned off, so I don’t see how they could be replacing my good data with their bad data. The only device that has syncing turned on right now is the computer I’m working on. So if I make changes there, shouldn’t it be replacing the bad data that’s on the server?
But why would it matter anyway if there were multiple sync devices all connected? Isn’t the way syncing works that if I update / create / delete a bookmark on any one of my devices, that most recent change should replace all the old, bad data that exists on all of the other devices?
Odabrano rješenje
Note that you need to reset the password of the Sync account to remove the data on the server and not simply change it.
Are all devices desktop devices or are mobile devices as well connected to Sync ?
Syncing bookmarks, especially to a mobile device, can cause places.sqlite getting corrupted.
On a desktop computer you should be able to recover by restoring an unaffected JSON backup, but that isn't possible on a mobile device.
If you use Sync then best is to reconnect one device at the time and wait for the initial Sync to finish before connecting another device once you have fixed the bookmarks.
You can install the About Sync extension in Firefox 72 and newer on desktop to check what data is stored on the Sync server via the about:sync page provided by this extension.
Close and restart Firefox to access the about:sync page added by this extension (see the about:about page for possible about pages).
That's helpful. I have 2 computers and an iPhone connected to sync. Instead of importing the bookmarks from the HTML file, I restored from a JSON backup and then synced to the server again, and that seemed to fix the issue. Then I synced to the other two devices. Hopefully everything stays fixed this time.
I appreciate your help!