Jerry Krinock
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Posts: 1666
Location: San Jose, California, USA
Joined: Sep 29th, 2008
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Re: Using 1 Mac as "master"
Reply #1 - Apr 29th, 2018 at 8:23pm
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Hello, camner.
When you switch on iCloud>Safari or Sign In to Chrome, these two services merge the bookmarks on all of your devices. So, if I understand you correctly, and I think your narrative is clear, what happened when you turned on iCloud>Safari and signed in to Chrome is that all of those old, out-of-sync bookmarks on your MacBook and iOS devices were synced to your iMac. Synkmark saw the large number of additions and rightfully said Whoa, something is wrong here.
Probably most of the bookmarks from your MacBook are the same bookmarks on your iMac. So you wonder: What is the big deal? Well, the very first time you import bookmarks into Synkmark, as you did in December, Synkmark will recognize and filter out duplicates from different browsers. But after that, Synkmark recognizes bookmarks from different browsers as being the same only if they have the same unique identifier, a number which you cannot see. This is because duplicates are a thing which some people have, and also because using the unique identifier results in way fewer bugs than trying to rigorously compare the attributes and location of each item. Sign in to Chrome and iCloud>Safari use these unique identifiers in the same way actually, Synkmark uses the identifiers which Safari and Chrome have assigned.
Unique identifiers are assigned when bookmarks are imported to a browser. Because these bookmarks which are on your iMac and your MacBook were imported at different places and times, they have different unique identifiers. Synkmark therefore sees them as different, which is why all the fuss.
To have avoided, this, you should have removed all bookmarks and folders from Chrome and Safari on your MacBook before switching on Sign in to Chrome and iCloud>Safari. Then they would have been populated by Sign in to Chrome and iCloud>Safari with bookmarks from your iMac, and Synkmark wouldn't even have noticed.
It looks like you still have the correct bookmarks in Synkmark, and syncing is paused. So, to fix it is simple.
Leave Sign in to Chrome and iCloud>Safari ON. In Chrome, delete all bookmarks and folders. Ditto for Safari. Don't forget the Reading List. Wait 20 minutes or so and verify that Chrome and Safari have no bookmarks or folders, in all of your devices. In Synkmark, switch Syncing to Ready (yellow circle), and Export as prompted. Quit Synkmark.
After a few minutes, Safari and Chrome on all of your devices should have your bookmarks from Synkmark, syncing is on, and you're back in business.
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