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After syncing a new account, firefox is wiping my synced information on all devices

Frederick Luehring
Frederick Luehring
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Hi Y'all,

I have Firefox syncing to about 6 different systems (Windows, Mac, iOS) and have run into a situation where Firefox is wiping years of my synced data when I quit and restart Firefox. I sync all of items that can be synced and this has served me well for many years. What happened:

  1. I logged on the admin account of a Mac where I previously logged in before and used Firefox with sync enabled. The machine had the initial Firefox short cuts: AP, Amazon, etc.
  2. I enabled sync and did a 2FA but the my normal Firefox home page did not appear. So pressed the Sync now button to no effect.
  3. When Firefox started, I did see the usual message that "It looks like you haven't started Firefox in a while. Would you like to refresh Firefox." I think that I closed that message but I could have accidentally refreshed Firefox for that account on that system.
  4. I gave up and did what I needed to, closed Firefox, and logged out.
  5. That evening when I was using Firefox on a Windows machine I could see that the sync information reduced to almost nothing from before the last day. The day I saw the saw the same and started to worry.
  6. However, the Firefox on my main two Macs still had all the data. As a test, I deliberately closed Firefox on one of those two Macs. When I restarted, the synced data was wiped. This leads me to believe that somehow Mozilla's servers are holding the data based for the almost empty content of Firefox that I had on the administrative account that I synced.

So in other words rather than importing my data from Firefox when I connected sync, sync exported the settings of the Firefox account I was using in the admin account. I am writing this from my other main Mac which still has full information and I would like to force the synced information on this Mac to override or at least merge with what is on the Mozilla servers. Can this be done? I am 99% sure that if I close Firefox on this machine all my settings will be wiped. For now a I believe that I still have the correct sync data on at least this Mac, my iPhone, and few other Windows and Linux machines. I am in particular worried about losing the hundreds of passwords that I have saved. I forgot to check if the passwords were overwritten when I restarted the first Mac but I'll bet they were.

Thanks for any help...

Fred

Hi Y'all, I have Firefox syncing to about 6 different systems (Windows, Mac, iOS) and have run into a situation where Firefox is wiping years of my synced data when I quit and restart Firefox. I sync all of items that can be synced and this has served me well for many years. What happened: # I logged on the admin account of a Mac where I previously logged in before and used Firefox with sync enabled. The machine had the initial Firefox short cuts: AP, Amazon, etc. # I enabled sync and did a 2FA but the my normal Firefox home page did not appear. So pressed the Sync now button to no effect. # When Firefox started, I did see the usual message that "It looks like you haven't started Firefox in a while. Would you like to refresh Firefox." I think that I closed that message but I could have accidentally refreshed Firefox for that account on that system. # I gave up and did what I needed to, closed Firefox, and logged out. # That evening when I was using Firefox on a Windows machine I could see that the sync information reduced to almost nothing from before the last day. The day I saw the saw the same and started to worry. # However, the Firefox on my main two Macs still had all the data. As a test, I deliberately closed Firefox on one of those two Macs. When I restarted, the synced data was wiped. This leads me to believe that somehow Mozilla's servers are holding the data based for the almost empty content of Firefox that I had on the administrative account that I synced. So in other words rather than importing my data from Firefox when I connected sync, sync exported the settings of the Firefox account I was using in the admin account. I am writing this from my other main Mac which still has full information and I would like to force the synced information on this Mac to override or at least merge with what is on the Mozilla servers. Can this be done? I am 99% sure that if I close Firefox on this machine all my settings will be wiped. For now a I believe that I still have the correct sync data on at least this Mac, my iPhone, and few other Windows and Linux machines. I am in particular worried about losing the hundreds of passwords that I have saved. I forgot to check if the passwords were overwritten when I restarted the first Mac but I'll bet they were. Thanks for any help... Fred

All Replies (3)

Frederick Luehring
Frederick Luehring Question owner
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That first line in point 1 should have been:

I logged on the admin account of a Mac where I previously logged in before and used Firefox without sync enabled

Helpful?

Frederick Luehring
Frederick Luehring Question owner
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A further update:

1) My passwords are intact as are my bookmarks. It appears that only thing obviously affected was the browser history. 2) I discovered some how the clear history on exit had been set to true. Since I had years of history it could not have been set to true previously. 3) Unfortunately MacOS rebooted my second Mac to install an update last night and I lost the history on it.. 4) I still have the history on my iPhone.

Can I force the browser history on my iPhone to upload to the Mozilla snyc server?

Thanks!

Fred

Helpful?

markwarner22
markwarner22
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Sync data is from the original computer that created the data. If you sync from a new computer not synced before - it will replace the sync data. What should've bee done was to get the computer that wasn't sync setup for sync and then connect with the other devices so they sync with the computer. But as that wasn't setup the new sync replaced the unsync computer data and trying to reverse it is probaly too late as that data is gone because of the sync.

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