How to trigger Bookmarks (Safari) syncing without the need to merge??

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Level 2

158 points

How to trigger Bookmarks (Safari) syncing without the need to merge??

I found that my bookmarks were out of sync on my home Mac (although iCloud was active), after I did some sorting and cleaning on the office Mac. Since I found no other way (wait or reboot did not help), I did deactivate and then re-activate bookmarks syncing in Preferences => iCloud => Safari. This DID trigger syncing, BUT (after I was offered the option to cancel or to merge) the result was that now the sorting and cleaning work I did before was lost. In fact, it was worse because of the merge in two directions.

So the question is:

What can one do to force syncing in a way that avoids the merge?

It is really stupid that there is no option (like with MobileMe) to select the sync direction. Or did I miss that?

iMac (21.5-inch Mid 2010), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Oct 12, 2012 11:14 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Csound1

Level 9

59,973 points

Oct 13, 2012 8:53 AM in response to bwadma

A sync is 2 way, wouldn't be a sync otherwise. Get the bookmarks right on one device, save them, delete all bookmarks on all devices, restore the saved set.

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Answer 2

bwadma Author

Level 2

158 points

Oct 14, 2012 1:56 AM in response to Csound1

OK, you are correct, but this is only due to the phrasing of my last comment and not because of the quality of iCloud syncing. MobileMe was MUCH better in this respect! It DID offer the option to overwrite the data WITHOUT the need to manually delete before.

In addition, this was not the core point.

The main point is that iCloud for (at least to me) unknown reasons did stop performing its job for the bookmarks that were synced before.

I would like to know if there is an option to trigger syncing, without the need to delete manually, and then switch of and on again.

Again, the question is:

What can one do to force syncing in a way that avoids the merge?

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Answer 3

Feb 27, 2013 11:01 AM in response to bwadma

I have found another way of doing this using Xmarks

* On iOS device - turn off icloud syncing for Safari - and delete from device

* On Mac - turn off iCloud syncing in settings

* On Mac - turn back on iCloud syncing and select Merge

* On Mac - re-download backup from Xmarks by doing sync download from Xmarks

Hey presto, you have correct synced copy back in the cloud.

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