Lost Favorites: How do I sync my Edge Favorites from Lumia 640 RM-1109 to Lumia 950 XL RM-1085

[Exotic Hadron]

Howdy!

I've got a Lumia 950 XL (RM-1085 SKU) phone and thought once I have logged into it with the Microsoft account I use on Lumia 640 (RM-1109), I'd have all my Edge favorites synced.

I thought Edge on Lumia 950 XL would get the favorites from the Microsoft account. Much like it did with my contacts and SMS: I've got them in 950 XL immediately after I logged with the Microsoft account I use on 640.

However, that's more than a day I'm on 950 XL and favorites list and reading list are empty. The phone didn't fetch them from 640.

How do I force the sync? I have synchronization enabled on both phones.

I don't won't to lose my favorites. Any chance to get them to 950 XL?

Thank you.

BTW, I wasn't able to restore backup copy created on Lumia 640 to 950 XL. Windows 10 just said it couldn't connect to service when it started to restore. Obviously connection wasn't the problem as I've made a gazillion of attempts to restore the backup.

 

[Diamond67]

Re: Lost Favorites: How do I sync my Edge Favorites from Lumia 640 RM-1109 to Lumia 950 XL

How do I force the sync?

Do you have a PC with Windows 10 installed? I myself don't have several mobile phones with Windows 10 Mobile, so haven't ever synced the favourites between phones. But at least my PC browser favourites can be synced with mobile phone. Actually, it didn't happen on purpose, and I don't remember if the synced favourites were from Internet Explorer or Edge. And it took some time to get synced anyway.

Sync your Microsoft Edge favorites & reading list across devices

 

[Exotic Hadron]

Re: Lost Favorites: How do I sync my Edge Favorites from Lumia 640 RM-1109 to Lumia 950 XL

Do you have a PC with Windows 10 installed? I myself don't have several mobile phones with Windows 10 Mobile, so haven't ever synced the favourites between phones. But at least my PC browser favourites can be synced with mobile phone. Actually, it didn't happen on purpose, and I don't remember if the synced favourites were from Internet Explorer or Edge. And it took some time to get synced anyway.

Sync your Microsoft Edge favorites & reading list across devices

Yes, I have a laptop, a PC and several virtual machines that had Windows 10 on them. These are not with me at the moment. I mean, these devices, except for the two phones are not used anymore. However, all of devices I've used are still present in the list of Devices in my Microsoft account. I keep them there in the fear of losing the Windows apps that I've purchased during my usage of these devices.

Interestingly, my laptop is listed 3 times in a row in the list (because I've used to install windows on a VHDX drive on that laptop).

I remember I had problems with synchronization of favorites on my laptop back in 2015. Those days I had to install a new Windows 10 build onto a new VHDX drive and I remember I had to start all my Favorites life again, this new install did not fetch the favorites neither from my phone nor from the old VHDX setup.

Heck, in IE the solution would've been just copy the URL files; however, with Edge you can't copy its Favorites folder to a new install, new Edge won't recognize the files from the old machine. So you have to rely on Windows built-in synchronization, which doesn't work...

The article reads:

Slow synchronization. It takes quite a few minutes for items to synchronize across devices. This is something that Microsoft should address in the future. For the time being, in my tests, it took 10-15 minutes for items to show up on all the devices I used (one laptop, one desktop PC and one smartphone).

Do these devices have to be online at the moment of syncing? I mean, do they have to be powered on?

 

[Diamond67]

Re: Lost Favorites: How do I sync my Edge Favorites from Lumia 640 RM-1109 to Lumia 950 XL

Do these devices have to be online at the moment of syncing? I mean, do they have to be powered on?

I think so. But I'm not sure, because for example OneNote uploads the data to the cloud. Maybe syncing of browser favourites doesn't work this way?

 

[Exotic Hadron]

I think so. But I'm not sure, because for example OneNote uploads the data to the cloud. Maybe syncing of browser favourites doesn't work this way?

Just for kicks, I've connected my spare laptop to my Microsoft account. And... gee, I did NOT get the favorites as well! If I didn't use this feature before, when my computers and phone were on Windows 8/8.1, I would think this feature does not work at all.

Seems to me, Microsoft has made some changes to how their synchronization works in Windows 10 Mobile and... completely screwed the whole thing. What are the pros of connecting my Microsoft account if I don't get the settings synchronized across devices?

However, there are the cons: once you connect your local account to the Microsoft account, you can no longer use local account credentials. Instead, you have to use Microsoft account credentials. In effect, if you've used network drives on remote machines that uses your local account credentials, the drives would be disconnected. To connect, you will need to provide your Microsoft account credentials on these remote computers. This doesn't seem secure to me. I'd prefer not to store hash of my MSFT account on my remote test machines. So, beware if you choose to link your local account with your Microsoft account.

 

[Diamond67]

I have two Windows 10 PC:s and one mobile phone with Windows operating system. I have disabled the sync because it actually worked too well for me. I got duplicates into my phone favourites. Maybe because I had synced IE favourites earlier to my phone. And then imported them to PC:s Edge, which synced them again with my phone? I'm not sure, cannot remember. But, anyway, I don't use the sync any more. Too much confusion. And I use Firefox with PC anyway.

Are you sure that sync is enabled in the Windows 10 Settings of your computer?

About local account and stuff:
https://www.theguardian.com/technol...1/how-can-i-use-a-local-account-in-windows-10

 

[Diamond67]

How do I force the sync?

About "force". One tip with email and calendar syncing occurred to me. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with favourites sync, but anyway:

With mobile, if you tap the People icon (which will open your contacts), and then tap the three dots … (bottom right hand corner) and choose to go to Settings, you see the Accounts there. Now, if you long-tap for example your Outlook Account or whichever is your MS Account, you can choose to manually Sync. This syncs for example your Calendar.

 

[Exotic Hadron]

Nothing worked... up until yesterday.
Here's the news.
All of a sudden, yesterday I have unlocked the phone only to find that the phone has changed the Accent color. Yep. I didn't do anything. It failed to synchronize accent colors for more than a month and now it has got the settings synchronized. A couple of hours later Favorites have also got synced. Obviously, MSFT had something to do with it. Looks like they've fixed something with OneDrive. I bet the problem with phones being unable to restore from a backup due to the Can't connect error is also solved.