Given that I am getting no responses on this post leads me to believe that no one has a solution to this problem or even a suggestion. I am assuming that this is because of the cryptic nature of the firefox sync engine. I just want to clear all existing sync data and start from scratch. I.e., what exists locally on my current profile.

1. Do we know for sure that deleting the firefox account will clear all the data off the sync server. And if I delete the account, CAN I create a new account with the same email??

2. Are there any sync tools available (development or otherwise) with the capability to clear the sync server for a particular account?? I am quite sure that a Mozilla developer somewhere has that capability. I can't help but believe that someone has develped tools to deal with situations where the sync data is corrupted. This sync engine has been around for a long time.

3. Are there any 3rd party sync tools like xBrowserSync that could be recommended. I probably wouldn't want to go in this direction for a variety of reasons but it is a thought.

You can install this extension in Firefox 72 and newer to check what data is stored on the Sync server via the about:sync page provided by this extension.

• About Sync https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/about-sync/

cor-el, you already suggested this in one of your previous posts (on page one) and I installed it and posted (see my previous post) that there is indeed data on the sync server, that the password change did not delete the data. Please look at the previous posts. This is why I asked the above 3 questions, for which I would like to get an answer. Thanks.

Changing the password should have wiped data stored on the Sync server. If that didn't work for you then try to delete (remove) this Sync account and cleanup all data in your current profile or create a new profile and then create a new Sync account.

If I delete the sync account, can I create a new one with the same email?

If the Firefox Account is deleted then you should be able to re-use the email AFAIK.

If you have defined a secondary email address then best might be to remove this email address.

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-secondary-email-address-firefox-accounts

Wish I knew for sure that I can create a new account with the same email. At this point I don't have much confidence with the inner workings of accounts and the sync engine, since nothing has behave as expected.

As far as having a new profile with a different sync account, this was a new profile and I am getting sync data from the old profile.

Curious, if you can have a separate sync account for each profile, does each one have to be a different email??

Yes, a Firefox Sync account is connected to a specific email address, so for each Firefox Account you need a separate email address. Easiest to test this out is to use an email service like Gmail or Outlook or Yahoo.

Greetings,

I had a similar issue, an accretion of duplicate (and many empty) folders and entries in my bookmarks, but with a different background/history {1}.

After reading this thread and some others, I decided to undertake the following procedure:

(0) check data integrity with the "about:support" procedure suggested by @cor-el (checked out OK);

(1) clean up the bookmarks on my original messed-up profile (A);

(2) disconnected all my devices from profile A;

(3) logged out of profile A on all devices;

(4) on one device (X), created a new Firefox profile as a backup (B) (and logged into it);

(5) sync'ed my data to profile B on device X;

(6) on another device (Y), logged into profile B and sync'ed data to profile B;

(7) logged out of profile B on both devices (X and Y): all devices are now logged out of any profile;

(8) logged into profile A on device X, request sync to A;

The folders are now synchronized without duplicates, so far (I just finished the procedure a few minutes ago).

New profile B was created as backup for my data, in case my attempt failed catastrophically, erasing all data.

Caveats:

(a) I do not know why this worked.

(b) I do not store passwords, only bookmarks with Firefox Sync (I use a password manager).

Hope this helps.

Note:

{1} No storage of passwords, no prior migration from Chrome, prior long-time use of cherished-now-defunct (fo)xmarks and transition to Firefox Sync, multiple devices, computers and OSes.

UPDATE (20200516): Yesterday I cleaned up my FF bookmarks on a notebook, backed up offline and sync'ed.

Today I cleared my FF bookmarks on a desktop and synchronized: the bookmarks bar did not populate with the bookmarks I had (thought I had) backed up yesterday.

I am now reluctant to synchronize the notebook FF bookmarks, as that may clear them out.

Confused.