Cannot sync Safari Bookmarks over iCloud or iTunes

Question

Cannot sync Safari Bookmarks over iCloud or iTunes

Many thanks for viewing this and whoever can figure this one out deserves extra points on this site.

Perhaps another title for this post could be Corrupted Bookmarks on iPad, Cannot Delete.

Here is my tale of woe...

I believe I misread instructions I found online for providing easier access to passwords in the 1Password.app.

I _thought_ they said to place the letters "op" (representing One Password) before URLs you wanted 1Password to open so all you had to do was input your 1Password Master Password. E.g,: ophttps://etc.

I set up about a half dozen URLs like this on my iMac and then did a sync to try them out.

While they did not work on the iPhone, they had no negative effect on it.

They may, however, be the reason why, right afterwards, Safari began crashing immediately after launch on my iPad.

I removed all of the offending bookmarks from Safari bookmarks on the iMac and did a Sync Now from both the iPad and iPhone.

The offending bookmarks are now gone from the iPhone but I cannot tell if they are gone from the iPad because, although I can now open Safari on the iPad w/o it crashing (if, that is, in Safari's Settings on the iPad, I have Always Show Bookmarks Bar set to Off) as soon as I tap the Bookmarks icon on Safari, Safari immediately closes/crashes.

I can now use Safari to load pages but, as soon as I touch that Bookmarks icon, it immediately crashes.

So, I am guessing that despite multiple syncs (in desperation,I even tried a full Restore of the iPad) those corrupt bookmarks persist in Safari on the iPad. I have tried syncing the iPad over WiFi, but for some odd reason it will no longer do so. I must connect it to the iMac and do a Sync in iTunes.

Does anyone think I have hit on what caused my problem with Safari?

Can anyone recommend a course of action to fix this?

Is there _any_ way or application I could use to access the file structure on the iPad and manually delete those bookmarks and then do a Sync?

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

P.s.: Running _all_ the latest versions of the OS on the iPhone, iPad, and iMac. The iPad is an almost brand new Mini iPad.

iPad, iOS 5.1.1

Posted on Jan 19, 2013 9:34 AM

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Answer 1

May 20, 2015 2:00 PM in response to Community User

I am posting the Apple Store solution here in the hopes that it may help someone with the same or a similar problem in the future.

In summary: I posted that the iPad, a three-month old iPad Mini, would not sync over WiFi, even though all the correct boxes were checked and, more seriously, while Safari would open, as soon as you tapped either the Bookmarks' icon or tried to enter a search string, Safari would crash. (FYI - From purchase to 18 Jan, it backed up over WiFi and Safari ran trouble free.)

If I went to iPad/Settings/iCloud and turned Safari off, I was asked if I wished to save or delete the Safari data on the iPad. No matter which I chose, the gearwheel would spin and then Settings would crash and, when I reopened Settings and went to iPad/Settings/iCloud, Safari was still turned on.

Tried everything, including a Restore of the iPad. That, too, failed.

So, a trip to the Genius bar, where a helpful young lady attached my iPad to a laptop with diagnostic software. Very strange, she observed: I cannot run the diagnostic program on your iPad.

What fixed all but the wireless sync part was her suggestion to do a reset, which she did in the store, and she then directed me to this Apple page:

iOS: How to back up your data and set up as a new device

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4137?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

She elicited from me the fact that I had an original iPad which I backed up before selling and then used that backup to get the new iPad Mini up and running.

She cautioned me strongly, when I plugged the iPad into my iMac, to choose Set Up New iPad and NOT Restore from backup and she noted that there has been the occasional customer coming into the Genius Bar with similar problems with their iPads and they have concluded that there may be something hinky about connecting a new iPad and carrying over all your settings from the old iPad or, doing this and then updating from iOS 5 to iOS 6

Safari now works, but WiFi sync does not. Next time I am in the area of the Apple Store, I'll see if they can run the diagnostics program on the iPad

and tell me why the WiFi sync is not working (BTW, my iPhone 5, with the same settings as the iPad, syncs just fine over the WiFi. Go figure.)

Hope this is helpful to someone.

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