Firefox uses "Firefox accounts" to access Sync and some other services. If you don't plan to use those services, then there's no need to sign in to Firefox and you can just work with websites without creating or using a Firefox account.

More info: Access Mozilla Services with a Firefox Account

If you already set up Sync and you now want to turn it off, I think you can do that from the Options page, Sync section, but I haven't tried it myself.

Hello jscher2000:

What about when it asked me to sign in to access help with Mozilla Firefox? I just wanted to look up an answer that was presumably already stored here. I just wanted to ask a question. Was this some kind of computer "hiccough" in the system?

I want to search for specific words or phrases ON THE WEBPAGE that I am looking at. Sometimes they hide these in bizarre corners of the page or something, or my eyes just aren't seeing them. (Sometimes I need to look up something like a certain month of the year or a certain day of the week, for example.)

For a long, long time, I have just searched in Windows by pressing control+F, and you get a nice little word search book. You put a word in like "July" or "contact", and it will find that for you. This is NOT working with Firefox. I do not want to search the Internet for something, and I do not want to search an entire huge Web site for something. I just want to search the page that is open on my desktop. You might be surprised at how useful this is, especially when you're wondering "Is 'Newton' mentioned on this page?" Or "nova", or "network", or "NBC", or whatever you want.

What the hell is going wrong?

Dale A. Wood

Hi Dale, Ctrl+f should open a bar along the bottom part of the tab with a box to enter the word you want to find in the page. Is nothing happening when you press Ctrl+f? The F3 function key also should open that bar, in case an add-on is intercepting Ctrl+f.

If you want to move the bar to the top of the tab to take advance of "muscle memory" from always seeing it there, or enhance the Find-in-page feature in other ways, of course, there are add-ons for that. For example: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/findbar-tweak/

Regarding this Support site, you do need a support account to ask a question or reply to a question here, but you shouldn't need one to search here. The support account is only for this site, and isn't related to a Firefox account for services.

One other tip: many keyboard shortcuts are listed in the menus, but the Menu Bar is not shown by default.

To turn different bars on and off, you can use one of these methods to show the toolbar list and select the desired bars there:

• right-click a blank spot on the tab bar (or the "+" button)
• tap the Alt key to activate the classic menu bar > View > Toolbars
• in Customize mode > Show/Hide Toolbars (see: Customize Firefox controls, buttons and toolbars)

To turn on the Menu Bar, Bookmarks Toolbar, or other bars, click it on the list.

To: jscher2000: No, this procedure is unsuitable as it is described:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/search-contents-current-page-text-or-links

When control+F is pressed, a search box should appear, and it should be obvious to anyone, and there should be no hunting for it, or making adjustments ahead of time.

The control+F search function is something that is built into WINDOWS, and it does not have anything to do with any particular browser, etc. It can be used in text documents, word-processing documents, Web pages, systems files, registries, you name it, whatever has text in it. It should work on automatic pilot anywhere in windows, with no thinking required. You can even use it in picture or audio files, on the bizarre occasion that the binary spells out "God is dead" somewhere. Of course, you near always get "nothing found" when doing that.

Dale A. Wood

Hi Dale, I don't understand your comment. Are you saying that your Firefox behaves in the way the article describes -- but that you prefer it to work a different way -- or that it doesn't behave in the way the article describes?

The Ctrl+f keyboard shortcut is a platform convention specified by Microsoft to call up the find feature in an application, but you can see from how different it looks and behaves in different applications that the actual code is not shared between them.

"Regarding this Support site, you do need a support account to ask a question or reply to a question here, but you shouldn't need one to search here. The support account is only for this site, and isn't related to a Firefox account for services."

These things need to be spelled out clearly for dummies of all kinds, even me, who are new to Firefox. Dummies who just have two degrees in electrical engineering and one in mathematics. It needs to be emphasized that there are: 1. Firefox accounts, and 2. Support accounts And what the difference is and who needs them and when.

Frankly, I don't see the need for "support accounts" anyway. You are not giving telephone support or chat support, and anyone should be able to write what they want to with freedom. In the United States and lot of other countries, we have freedom of the press and freedom of speech, and also the freedom to read just about whatever we want to.

Microsoft has a deadly set of confusion factors regarding accounts. There is this gizmo called a "Microsoft account", and then sometimes the system demands your "Windows account". I haven't cleared this up yet, and I should not have to.

To regular people who put their pants on one legs at a time, "Microsoft" and "Windows" are synonymous. "Windows" is even a registered trademark for the Microsoft Corporation. In common language, Microsoft means Windows, and Windows means Microsoft, and it is dumb to split hairs about it. It just confuses people, even though Microsoft makes other products besides Windows.

To summarize, a Windows account IS a Microsoft account because Windows belongs to Microsoft, and Microsoft makes Windows. Also, to most people "Windows" means "Microsoft".

It is just like in common talk, Chevrolet means the General Motors Corp., and General Motors means Chevrolet, even though the GMC also makes Buicks, Cadillacs, GMC trucks, and other products, and it used to make Pontiacs and Oldsmobiles, too.

Sincerely, Dale A. Wood

What I am saying is that when using Mozilla Firefox to look at a Web page, I pressed the Ctrl+F keyboard shortcut, and absolutely nothing at all happened !

I have been having this problem with several different people lately. They get confused, but I think that when I write or say, "I did so and so, and it malfunctioned, and nothing happened," this is crystal clear. "Nothing" means no positive function, no expected function, no error message, no beep, no change in the appearance of the screen.... I don't know how I can be clearer than the word "nothing". Maybe that is because I am an engineer and a mathematician and I know what the "null set" is.

Dale A. Wood

jscher2000 said

Hi Dale, I don't understand your comment. Are you saying that your Firefox behaves in the way the article describes -- but that you prefer it to work a different way -- or that it doesn't behave in the way the article describes? The Ctrl+f keyboard shortcut is a platform convention specified by Microsoft to call up the find feature in an application, but you can see from how different it looks and behaves in different applications that the actual code is not shared between them.

Europamoon100 said

What I am saying is that when using Mozilla Firefox to look at a Web page, I pressed the Ctrl+F keyboard shortcut, and absolutely nothing at all happened !

What if you press the F3 function key?

What if you use the Edit menu to call up Find? (If you do not normally display the menu bar, you can display it temporarily by pressing and releasing either the Alt key or the F10 key)

I have been having this problem with several different people lately. They get confused, but I think that when I write or say, "I did so and so, and it malfunctioned, and nothing happened," this is crystal clear. "Nothing" means no positive function, no expected function, no error message, no beep, no change in the appearance of the screen.... I don't know how I can be clearer than the word "nothing". Maybe that is because I am an engineer and a mathematician and I know what the "null set" is.

Or maybe it's because you wrote this:

Europamoon100 said

To: jscher2000: No, this procedure is unsuitable as it is described:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/search-contents-current-page-text-or-links

Unsuitable as it is described?

Europamoon100 said

Frankly, I don't see the need for "support accounts" anyway. You are not giving telephone support or chat support, and anyone should be able to write what they want to with freedom. In the United States and lot of other countries, we have freedom of the press and freedom of speech, and also the freedom to read just about whatever we want to.

If you mean Guest accounts then that feature has not been in use since the early days back in oh 2007 or 2008. It made it harder to know who is whom and increased hijackings of threads. You need a support.mozilla.org account in order post and to keep track of said posts.

Hello:

Neither pressing control+F nor pressing F3 does anything at all. And I really mean "Nothing".

Perhaps I need to quit, reboot my PC, and start all over again.

Yes, unsuitable as it is described in the help pages because it takes too many steps, and it is too complicated. The command to search for a word on a page ought to be so simple that it is nearly effortless. It should not take more than one click.... I've done that 1,000,000 times in the history of Windows.

D.A.W.

jscher2000 said

Europamoon100 said

What I am saying is that when using Mozilla Firefox to look at a Web page, I pressed the Ctrl+F keyboard shortcut, and absolutely nothing at all happened !

What if you press the F3 function key?

What if you use the Edit menu to call up Find? (If you do not normally display the menu bar, you can display it temporarily by pressing and releasing either the Alt key or the F10 key)

I have been having this problem with several different people lately. They get confused, but I think that when I write or say, "I did so and so, and it malfunctioned, and nothing happened," this is crystal clear. "Nothing" means no positive function, no expected function, no error message, no beep, no change in the appearance of the screen.... I don't know how I can be clearer than the word "nothing". Maybe that is because I am an engineer and a mathematician and I know what the "null set" is.

Or maybe it's because you wrote this:

Europamoon100 said

To: jscher2000: No, this procedure is unsuitable as it is described:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/search-contents-current-page-text-or-links

Unsuitable as it is described?

No, James, I have never heard of a guest account before in Firefox, and as I mentioned before, I am a very new user of Firefox.

I was writing about this as a freedom-of-communication issue. I ought to be able to read the support files, and to search for the answer that I need, without having to log into anything. I don't even intend to write anything there, just look, search, read, and learn.

Also, from the general point-of-view, people have the right to ask questions and make comments as they wish. If some jackass wishes to write some ugly garbage, or ask useless questions, those can always be deleted later. I am the first person to mark something stupid as "unsuitable" for deletion, and in a forum about problems with a computer program, 500,000,000 people like me stick to the subject. It is not good to treat everyone as criminals and vandals, and that is what we have First Amendment rights for.

Dale A. Wood

James said

Europamoon100 said

Frankly, I don't see the need for "support accounts" anyway. You are not giving telephone support or chat support, and anyone should be able to write what they want to with freedom. In the United States and lot of other countries, we have freedom of the press and freedom of speech, and also the freedom to read just about whatever we want to.

If you mean Guest accounts then that feature has not ben in use since the early days back in oh 2007 or 2008. It made it harder to know who is whom and increased hijackings of threads. You need a support.mozilla.org account in order post and to keep track of said posts.

Hi Dale, the way it works for me is:

• press Ctrl+f
• start typing and Firefox searches for the first match as I type, and dings when there is no match, which usually means I made a typo

If none of the methods to call up the Find bar work for you --

• Ctrl+f
• F3
• Edit menu > Find (or from the keyboard, Alt+e then f)

-- then something definitely is broken. Possibly your installation of Firefox is corrupt, or one of your add-ons is interfering somehow.

Hi, jscher2000 !

Thank you. I can get that to work. The directions in the support files say something about something about the search "appearing in the tab", which is incorrect. I got something that appeared in the lower left-hand corner of the Web page. Also, someone said (about Firefox) about right-clicking in the tab (yes, up yonder) and then pressing the Alt key. Well, nothing happens then.

I am old enough to know what the top tab of a (paper) folder is. It is the part of the folder that you grab to pull it out of a filing cabinet, if only partially, and you also write on the tab. In Windows and Firefox, there is the picture of a paper folder tab AT THE TOP of the Web page. I can see it with my own eyes, and right now I am looking at the tab that says "How do I sign in to Firefox?" I have another tab that says "NASA Image of the Day". If I have a folder, whether it is in a cabinet or not, for "John Smith", then I write "John Smith" on the tab. If I have a computer folder in Windows, I have icons and diagrams of a tan manila folder, sitting on its side, oddly with the tab drawn on the lower right. There are also some diagrams of folders that do not have any tabs at all. I wanted to give you a picture of a Windows folder, but this e-mail program would not let me do that.

File folders sitting in cabinets have their tabs on the top, and tabs for Web pages in Foxfire, etc., are at the TOP of the pages. That's the way the graphic artists drew them, imitating the real world.

Microsoft made a very big mistake with the folder "setting" "Show the entire [address] path in the tab. Well, to begin with, there is not enough room in the tab to present something like "https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1130039#question-reply", and some computer paths get much longer than that, just to make one up> "c:windows\system32\microsoft\blah-blah-blah...\desktop\users\Rumplestiltskin

jscher2000 said

Hi Dale, the way it works for me is:

• press Ctrl+f
• start typing and Firefox searches for the first match as I type, and dings when there is no match, which usually means I made a typo

If none of the methods to call up the Find bar work for you --

• Ctrl+f
• F3
• Edit menu > Find (or from the keyboard, Alt+e then f)

-- then something definitely is broken. Possibly your installation of Firefox is corrupt, or one of your add-ons is interfering somehow.