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Firefox Sync results in double the bookmarks and folders

  • 23 cavab
  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by Steve H

Steve H
Steve H
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I have been using Firefox since it first came out and replaced the old Mozilla browser. When Firefox Sync first came out, I used it a few times and it messed up my bookmarks. As a result, I went back to manually syncing my bookmarks by exporting them on my primary computer and then deleting and importing them on my secondary computer. I recently tried Firefox sync again and it messed up my bookmarks again. The result was double the bookmarks and folders. I have a first set of bookmarks and folders that appear the be synced followed by a second set of bookmarks and empty folders. The second set follows the same order as the first set above starting with Bookmarks Toolbar, Other Bookmarks, Recently Bookmarked, Recently Tagged, and then a bunch empty folders. Also in the first set, many of my favicons are missing. What is going on and how can I fix this?

Thank you,

I have been using Firefox since it first came out and replaced the old Mozilla browser. When Firefox Sync first came out, I used it a few times and it messed up my bookmarks. As a result, I went back to manually syncing my bookmarks by exporting them on my primary computer and then deleting and importing them on my secondary computer. I recently tried Firefox sync again and it messed up my bookmarks again. The result was double the bookmarks and folders. I have a first set of bookmarks and folders that appear the be synced followed by a second set of bookmarks and empty folders. The second set follows the same order as the first set above starting with Bookmarks Toolbar, Other Bookmarks, Recently Bookmarked, Recently Tagged, and then a bunch empty folders. Also in the first set, many of my favicons are missing. What is going on and how can I fix this? Thank you,

All Replies (3)

Steve H
Steve H Question owner
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cor-el,

Thanks for your reply. You saved me from doing a refresh.

At this time, I am done with this issue. Obviously, sync cannot safely do what I can easily do with a manual export and import of my bookmarks from one computer to another. I have been able to reproduce the problem 3 times on my desktop and 1 time on my laptop. Obviously, there is a bug with sync.

I will look into how I can report this bug to Mozilla's team.

Thanks again for your help on this issue.

Regards,

Steve

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 25 Contributor
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Hi Steve, I haven't tested this, but I had a thought.

Is it possible that Firefox Sync does not de-duplicate bookmarks, and instead treats each bookmark as a unique item to be preserved, even if it has the same URL and title as a bookmark from a different installation of Firefox? That could explain why starting with two full slates of identical bookmarks led to double bookmarks on both Firefoxes for you.

Steve H
Steve H Question owner
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Hi Jscher,

I have thought the same thing that sync does not create a unique list of bookmarks and maybe just merges the 2 lists together. This appears not to be the case, the 2nd set of folders are all empty, but all bookmarks at the top level and outside a folder are duplicated.

I wrote a small Python program to read all of my persdict.dat files in 2 Firefox and 2 Thunderbird installations and output a new persdict.dat file with list of unique and sorted words in order to sync my persdict.dat files across these 4 installations.

It seems that sync is broken as it was a few years ago when I 1st tried it, so I will continue to do this with a manual export and import of my bookmarks from one computer to another. It is disappointing that this problem still exists after a few years.

Regards,

Steve

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