How Can Bookmarks Be Replaced in iCloud?

If you add or delete a bookmark in Lion 10.7.2 with Safari 5.1.1 these changes will automatically be reflected on your iOS5 Safari. there is no manual settings.

Brief note: to see the Library folder in Mac Finder go to the "Go" menu and hold down the Option key. Library will magically appear in the list.

Wow... will work through that in a few minutes (child demanding food....) because since turning on iCloud bookmarks my iPhone and iPad are both toast.

I have hundreds of "1Password Logins" items and nothing much else.

I was using Foxmarks to sync chrome to safari (turned that off for now, will carefully turn that back on IF I can get the Safari working with iOS).

I tired your suggestions and they do not work for me though. I have a MBP, iMac, iPhone 4, and iPad 2. All up-to-date with the latest OS/iOS. Bookmarks in all my devices after moving to iCloud are dupplicated 34 times and they keep growing as I tried to clean that stuff up, turn off Bookmarks in iCloud under my iPhone or iPad.

I Turnned off iCloud on my iPhone and iPad and proceeded to clean and reset to a pristine state my Safari in my MBP and iMac. All goes OK. I wait abotu 30 mins-40 mins and so far so good in both machnes. As soon as I turn Bookmarks on on either from my iPad or iPhone all the screw up Bookmarks comes back worst multiplying the dupplicates entries and folder worse than the previous time.

Even the Geinus Bar guy could not help me in resetting my iCloud bookmarks! So frustrated and I have wasted over 15 hours this weekend in trying to get this issue sorted out to no avail 😟

Forgot to mentioned in my previous note that under Safari in my iPad2 it does not allow me to delete my bookmark folders. I will have to go into each folder and delete those entries one by one... with hundreads of bookmarks in each folder this is a total nightmare. I can't delete a bookmark folder either. It does not allow you to do that!

Forgot to mentioned in my previous note that under Safari in my iPad2 it does not allow me to delete my bookmark folders. I will have to go into each folder and delete those entries one by one... with hundreads of bookmarks in each folder this is a total nightmare. I can't delete a bookmark folder either. It does not allow you to do that!

I've established that having a large 1Password javascript bookmark anywhere in the set breaks everything. Try deleteing all bookmarks, especially any 1Password ones and then if you can copy back everything except that one.

I did that carefully with all syncing turned off and then turned it on successively over the course of quite af few minutes. All is OK now except for my 1Password bookmarklet.

In Safari on the Mac, I have nine folders in the Bookmarks Bar, each of them with a bunch of bookmarks. I tried all of the above but couldn't get the iPad and iPhone to show the correct Bookmarks Bar. The bookmarks in the Bookmarks menu or at the top level were OK from the start. After doing everything as described by Jim Scott and turning off iCloud sync and removing everything from the iPad and iPhone, and turning sync on again, the Bookmarks Bar just stayed empty on the iPad and the iPhone.

However, I noticed that if I added a new bookmark in the Bookmarks Bar of Safari on the Mac (at the top level, not in a folder) it appeared after a second or two on the iPad and the iPhone.

So, in Safari on the Mac, I opened the "Show all bookmarks" window and in the Bookmarks Bar I did this:

- I copied the first bookmark folder

- I renamed the old one that I had just copied by appending ".old"

- I pasted the bookmark folder so that it appeared at the same level as the original one, now named xxx.old

- It immediately appeared on the iPad and the iPhone.

- I deleted the .old folder

- I did the same thing for each folder one by one.

All the folders appeared on the iPad and the iPhone, containing all their bookmarks.

When I was satisfied that my bookmarks in Safari were good on the Mac and on all devices, I checked to see if the whole thing works with iCloud when I add or remove bookmarks. Apparently it does.

I also noticed, before doing any of this, that in the Info tab of iTunes for either device, there was a checkbox in "Other" offering to sync with iTunes on the Mac, although it also said that bookmarks were being synced with iCloud. After getting things to work I checked back and the iTunes sync checkbox is gone.

So various methods seem to be useful to get things to work.

--Ellen

Several of the methods that have worked for others depend on having a Mac as your laptop/desktop. I'm having similar problems in that I would like to delete all bookmarks from iCloud, but my primary computer is a Vista laptop (your sympathies are appreciated :-) with it and a 3gs, an iPad 1 and an iPad 2 syncing to the iCloud. Has anyone found a method that does not require a Mac?

Thanks

This is just dandy.

The marketing people have taken control.

Dumbing down the Address Book and Calendar (no smartgoup synching, no way of bulk editing groups, 3 pane view, output to csv... etc), introducing that vomitous yellow brown 'leather look' so that iOS users feel at home.

After 6 years of battling with syncing on Mobile Me, again I find my data messing up, bookmarks all over the place.. off we go again...

I too am frustrated by trying to set up icloud bookmark sync, and also the inability to directly see/manage the bookmarks on icloud.com. I spent a couple of hours cleaning up my bookmarks in Safari on my Mac (Lion 10.7.2), and trying to get them to sync with my iPhone 4S. Wasted time.

At first, with icloud bookmark sync enabled in the Mac preference pane, I was having trouble actually editing the bookmarks in Safari on the Mac in real time, e.g. bookmarks I was rearranging within folders were getting moved back right in front of my eyes. So I decided to turn off bookmark sync in the Mac icloud preference pane and try again. I got everything the way I wanted it, and sadly, as soon as I turned on the sync function in the icloud preference pane, I got a prolifieration of duplicates, old bookmarks, re-arranged bookmarks, etc. - a complete mess. I eventually realized that when you check the box in the icloud preference pane to turn bookmarks sync back on, after it was off, the dialogue box only gives the choice to "merge" or "cancel". So the bookmarks that are on icloud already are what's causing the problem b/c I don't want to merge, I want to first replace, and then sync.

So here is how I solved my problem. I first turned off icloud bookmark sync in the Mac prefernce pane. On the iPhone, I left icloud boomark sync turned on, then I went into mobile Safari and manually deleted every bookmark that existed there. I waited several minutes to allow those changes to sync with icloud, essentially deleting all bookmarks on icloud. Then I turned off icloud bookmark sync on the iPhone. Back on the Mac, I got all my bookmarks organized as I wanted, then I turned on the bookmark sync in the preference pane, which correctly populated icloud with only the bookmarks I wanted from my Mac. After several minutes, I turned the icloud bookmark sync back on at the iPhone, and now everything seems to be working fine.

The key was realizing the "merge" functionality from turning on the Mac icloud bookmark sync is not at all what I wanted, and the only way to make that work was to merge into an empty icloud bookmarks, which could only be accomplished from the iOS device. This would all have been much simpler if there was a way to directly see and manage the bookmarks residing on icloud, as we can with calendars (which, btw, I'm now off to troubleshoot...).

I hope this experience helps someone.

This is a followup on my previous post. I had thought that things were fixed. They were not, although I was very careful to do any editing of bookmarks in Safari on the Mac. I don't change my browser bookmarks all that often so I'm not sure when things went wrong again. A few days ago I changed a few bookmarks in Safari Mac (just got rid of a folder and put the bookmarks one level up). I noticed that this change was not reflected on the iPad or iPhone.

Today, I did a bit of cleaning up in one of my bookmarks folders on Safari Mac and nothing was changed on the mobiles. I fiddled around a bit but nothing came of it and I really didn't want to go to all the trouble of doing what I had done a few weeks ago just to find that the fix doesn't stick.

Next step: stop trying to use something that's obviously broken. iCloud seems to work fine for contacts and iCal, but I'm totally fed up with wasting my time on iCloud bookmarks syncing. I turned Bookmarks off on the iPhone and the iPad, told it to remove all bookmarks and then turned on iTunes sync for both mobiles. The first try was not good. The folder I had changed previously on both the Mac and the mobiles was now empty everywhere. Since I also use Xmarks, I just reverted to the bookmarks a few hours ago and back they were on all browsers. I synced again with iTunes and this time all the bookmarks were OK.

It may have something to do with my using Xmarks to sync Safari, Chrome and Firefox, but I do need that functionality. And using iTunes for the iPhone and iPad is much less of a headache than trying to get iCloud sync to work reliably.

I must say that I seriously regret the absence of any control over what overwrites what and the absence of any interface in iCloud. I'll wait a while and come back after a few updates to see if thing are better.

--Ellen

"So here is how I solved my problem. I first turned off icloud bookmark sync in the Mac prefernce pane. On the iPhone, I left icloud boomark sync turned on, then I went into mobile Safari and manually deleted every bookmark that existed there. I waited several minutes to allow those changes to sync with icloud, essentially deleting all bookmarks on icloud. Then I turned off icloud bookmark sync on the iPhone. Back on the Mac, I got all my bookmarks organized as I wanted, then I turned on the bookmark sync in the preference pane, which correctly populated icloud with only the bookmarks I wanted from my Mac. After several minutes, I turned the icloud bookmark sync back on at the iPhone, and now everything seems to be working fine."

I tried that and still it does not work for me... unless I only enter new bookmarks into my iPhone or iPad. If I try doing that with my MBP or iMac nothing syncs though. Even just doing it from the iPhone or iPad when I add a new entry to a folder on my MPB or iMac shows up in the top root of bookmarks not where I put it from my iOS device which prompts me to manually move the new entry to its corresponding folder on each machine! This issue as well as Notes dissappearing completely from all my devices have left me very frustrated and with a very sour taste about a half baked cooked product! Are we alone, how come there are no reports in the TechMedia to call on Apple's attention to this continuous issues? Totally puzzled... so Tempted to go back to MobileMe and ditch iCloud altogether. Not worth the aggraviation!

Yeap, iCloud Mail is having a fart time again as of 11/11/11 4:36pm EST! It's NOT WORKING!!!!! APPLE WHAT'S GOING ON? Time to move to Windows???