Help me make sense of the new Bookmark Rules

Help me make sense of the new Bookmark Rules

I am on version 10.10 of Opera. I have been using Opera since version 3 in the 1990s, so have an ancient and huge bookmarks file I have been bringing along with me for years. Organised in folders and setup in a way I understand.

This means I have many duplicates among my bookmarks. Duplicates that are there for a reason as a bookmark may fit in two different categories on my bookmarks tree.

Also I have a very busy Personal Bar. This was mainly created by dragging pages up to the Personal Bar, and then deleting the titles to leave just the favourite icons. The "main" bookmark for those sites are then filed in the main bookmark folders, complete with their full titles.


Trouble is, I now realise that this will cause problems with the new version of Opera 10.5x. From what I have read, there is an automated Opera script that quietly removes all duplicates from the bookmarks list. I read that this is to do with Opera Sync (something I do not use). (Please correct me if I am wrong here?)


What I realise I need to do is manually clean up and reorganise my duplicate bookmarks BEFORE I upgrade to 10.5x otherwise I won't know which duplicates go missing.

1\ HOW does the routine go about removing duplicates? Is there any warning of which are removed?

2\ My personal bar is full of duplications. How is the Personal Bar supposed to work now? I have bookmarks here migrated from version 3 up right up to version 10. So I can see old structures in there, old Opera 6 and Opera 7 defaults, and most importantly the old Personal Bar folder.

Do I assume that the old Personal Bar folder is now obsolete and replaced by the "tick" to "Show on Personal Bar" in the main Bookmark Properties? Or will the "Personal Bar" folder still be used?

3\ Has anyone found a way of "cheating" and keeping duplicates? For example will Opera see http:\\www.opera.com the same as http:\\www.opera%2ecom ?


Thanks in advance for any guidance or pointers towards the new rules.

As far as I can tell there is no problem with keeping duplicates. There is an option on Opera Link to remove duplicates, but you don't have to use it. Whatever, make a backup before upgrading. See my sig for a useful free utility.

Thanks Pesala - that is reassuring that I can turn it off. Do I assume that as I have Opera Link disabled, and no account setup, then this duplicate removal will also be disabled?

And yeah - full backups will be taken before the update. (Constant backup anyway due to importance of Opera to me)


I am still curious as to the correct format of the new Bookmarks. Do you know how the personal bar is now handled? Is it just from the tick of "Show on Personal Bar"?

Documentation — as usual — is sadly lacking. There is something new to stop users adding duplicates to the same folder. This behaviour may be “By Design” or a bug, or no quite working right. No one seems to know exactly how it is supposed to work. I assume it is just supposed to stop you adding two bookmarks to the same folder.

See this earlier thread

I don't use the Personal Bar much. I have several folders showing on it — all have the tick in properties. I added them by drag and drop. I don't have a Personal Bar folder in bookmarks.

Thanks for that. It was the confused conversations that were getting me confused. Now I understand why. (I'll go read that thread in a bit)

Your last description is perfect for me. As I know you are on 10.52 and have no bookmark folder named "Personal Bar", then I think that is enough info to reverse engineer that new file. I can make a start on cleaning things up in there. (It is about time really... )

Originally posted by Pesala:

There is something new to stop users adding duplicates to the same folder.

Not quite right. There is something new to stop users adding duplicates at all, anywhere!* It's not just same folder duplicate prevention. I'm surprised Pesala that you still don't know/believe this.

* There's known workarounds, like dragging a tab to bookmarks.

I've read the thread, and it is clearly a broken feature. Another reason for me to wait before upgrading.