Can no longer edit bookmarks in Safari after having imported them from Firefox.

Question

Can no longer edit bookmarks in Safari after having imported them from Firefox.

I had imported bookmarks from Firefox --> Safari, and now Safari will not let me delete or even add bookmarks (!). It says "You have been using Safari with bookmarks, history, and passwords imported from Firefox. To edit your bookmarks, you must first keep or remove the Firefox data." There are buttons to click regarding whether to keep or don't keep the data. Clicking any button does nothing, and I still can't add a simple bookmark, or delete one.

There was a discussion thread about this problem in 2017, and the main suggestions were:

Remove the >com.apple.Safari.plist from the Library/Preferences list, and restart, or
edit bookmarks from the sidebar.

NEITHER of these choices work. I still get the same message.

I am running Safari 12.0.2 on OS High Sierra 10.13.6 on a MacBook Pro.

MacBook Pro 15", 10.13

Posted on Feb 16, 2019 1:20 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Eric Root

Level 10

685,311 points

Feb 19, 2019 10:30 AM in response to markfromgrand blanc

If you have any Bookmarks you want to save, go Safari/File/Export Bookmarks.

Do a backup, preferably 2 backups on 2 separate drives.

Quit the application.

Go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J. When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder. Select Library. Then go to Safari/Bookmarks.plist. Move the .plist to your desktop.

Restart the computer, open the application, and test. If it works okay, delete the plist from the desktop.

If the application is the same, return the .plist to where you got it from, overwriting the newer one.

Thanks to leonie for some information contained in this.

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Answer 2

Eric Root

Level 10

685,311 points

Feb 20, 2019 9:01 AM in response to markfromgrand blanc

If you are syncing Safari using iCloud, try going to System Preferences/iCloud and turn off Safari syncing to see if that makes difference.

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Answer 3

Feb 20, 2019 1:37 PM in response to Eric Root

It does not look like it was set up to sync Safari with iCloud. At least in iCloud Safari does not have a check mark next to it.

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Answer 4

Feb 19, 2019 7:44 AM in response to Eric Root

Thank you for replying. Bringing up Show Bookmarks and then attempting to delete one by control-right click does not work. Also Option-right click and Command-right click does not work. In all cases i get the above window and there is no change in the bookmarks.

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Answer 5

Feb 19, 2019 4:29 PM in response to Eric Root

I did the plist thing already, as was described above, but let's try it with the steps you suggest.

From the Finder/View/Show View options, I do get a window that is new to me, but it does not have the Show Library Folder option.

But I can navigate to the Users/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist myself (though I do wonder if there are other routes to a DIFFERENT Safari/ Bookmarks.plist)...

Dragged it to the desktop. Restarted. Opened Safari, and tried to delete a bookmark. It won't let me, as before. So i put the .plist file back.

But thank you for your suggestion. Still no solution. I had found a very old conversation from many years ago from a user describing the exact same problem after loading bookmarks from Chrome. So this issue is very old, and has not been resolved that I can see. I am a 60 year old man, and my computer won't let me edit my bookmarks. Sheesh.

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Answer 6

Eric Root

Level 10

685,311 points

Feb 16, 2019 1:51 PM in response to markfromgrand blanc

Have you tried selecting a Bookmark, then control - click/Delete? I just tried it and it worked for me.

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Answer 7

Eric Root

Level 10

685,311 points

Feb 19, 2019 5:42 PM in response to markfromgrand blanc

You are welcome. When you dragged the Bookmarks.plist to the Desktop, did it remove it from the user Library or just make a copy? You need to make sure once you drag it to the Desktop, that the one in the user Library is removed.

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Answer 8

Feb 20, 2019 7:54 AM in response to Eric Root

Yes, dragging the .plist to the desktop definitely removes it from the Safari folder. I just tried it again to be sure.

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Can no longer edit bookmarks in Safari after having imported them from Firefox.

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