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Nye Bevan

(25,406 posts)
Sun May 11, 2014, 06:15 PM May 2014

New Firefox WARNING for those who use Firefox sync for bookmarks and iCloud sync.

This kept me up for hours last night. I use Firefox sync to keep bookmarks and settings in sync for my desktop computers, and iCloud sync (from one of my desktop computers) to keep the bookmarks in sync with my mobile devices (iPhones and iPads). When I upgraded to the new Firefox and went to the iCloud control panel to turn the bookmark sync back on (which had been automatically deactivated with the Firefox update) the number of bookmarks on my desktops and mobile devices exploded into the thousands, slowing everything to a crawl. I was baffled for quite a while, but here is what it turned out happened:

1. Firefox Sync was set to sync Add-ins as well as bookmarks and settings;
2. The new Firefox iCloud Bookmark sync requires an add-in to be installed in Firefox, which I duly installed on the one PC that I use for this;
3. Unbeknownst to me, Firefox Sync then installed the same add-in on my other desktop PCs (because Firefox Sync was set to sync the add-ins);
4. So at that point I had 3 desktop PCs all syncing bookmarks to iCloud as well as syncing bookmarks with each other;
5. BOOM! Infinite recursive exploding bookmark sync nightmare! (iCloud adds bookmark folder to PC A; PC A syncs this bookmark to PC B; PC B uploads this bookmark to iCloud; iCloud thinks its a new bookmark and sends it to PC A; rinse and repeat.....)

And cleaning this mess up was no picnic. Firefox was slowed to a crawl and it would have taken days to delete the extraneous bookmark folders. So here is how I was eventually able to fix things:

1. Set Firefox Sync not to sync add-ins, on EVERY PC;
2. Remove the iCloud Firefox bookmark sync add-in from all the PCs except the one I use to sync the bookmarks with iCloud (temporarily disable the add-in on this PC);
3. Restore the Firefox bookmarks on one PC from a previous day's automatic backup (Bookmarks-Show all Bookmarks-Import and Backup-Restore). Firefox sync then restored the clean bookmarks to the other PCs.
4. To clean up the bookmarks in iCloud, go to the iCloud control panel and set to sync bookmarks with Internet Explorer (which I never use under normal circumstances). The horrible thousands of bookmarks abomination is then imported into Internet Explorer. But I could then go to the Favorites folder in Windows Explorer and delete them all in just a couple of minutes. So this deleted all the iCloud bookmarks.
5. Get an iPhone and check that the iCloud bookmarks have indeed been deleted.
6. Go back to the iCloud control panel, set to sync bookmarks with Firefox, and re-enable the Firefox add-in to do this.
7. Clean bookmarks are then synced back to iCloud and you are done!

Quite frustrating and annoying but eventually it worked!

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New Firefox WARNING for those who use Firefox sync for bookmarks and iCloud sync. (Original Post) Nye Bevan May 2014 OP
iCloud keeps resyncing deleted bookmarks to internet explorer nswainfy Sep 2014 #1
love my 4 PCs but I don't use (or need) the cloud storage. Sunlei Sep 2014 #2

nswainfy

(1 post)
1. iCloud keeps resyncing deleted bookmarks to internet explorer
Fri Sep 5, 2014, 11:53 PM
Sep 2014

Hi there,
I am up to the stage in your instructions of deleting the favorites (bookmarks) from internet explorer. Once I delete the favorites after 3 or 4 minutes they come back in their duplicated form (900 or so).

I have repeated this about 7 times and it keeps coming back.

Any hints to get out of this loop. Is there another way to flush the icloud bookmarks from a pc?

Thanks

Sunlei

(22,651 posts)
2. love my 4 PCs but I don't use (or need) the cloud storage.
Sat Sep 6, 2014, 10:35 AM
Sep 2014

What I do is put my favorites folder & anything else I want to save on a flash drive and restore my PC to factory settings. I find my method almost frustration free

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