Lost my Master Password - now what?
I changed my Master Password earlier and wrote it down, but I must have written it down wrong. I've been trying for over an hour to figure out what it is, and I give up. From what I'm reading, I think my only choice now is to delete my existing account and create a new one?
I do not have team members, nobody invited me to join and I have not set up two-factor authentication. I think I'm syncing using iCloud, but I'm not sure.
I am still signed into 1Password on my Mac, and I did an export of my vault (I only have one). However, it said the export does not support documents, so I guess I'm going to lose any and all images I have stored?
How will I restore everything to my new 1Password subscription once I delete the current one?
Any advice is appreciated.
1Password Version: 7.4
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: OS X 10.14.6
Sync Type: Not Provided
Comments
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@JDLee - I'm so sorry to hear about the forgotten Master Password! That's a terrible feeling. And yes, you're correct. If you truly cannot remember it and you've given these steps a shot, but it's still not working, you will need to start over.
If you still have access to your account in 1Password for Mac, you can use these instructions to download the Document items to your Mac, then you can re-upload them to a new 1password.com account once you get it set up.
You say you "exported" your data from the current account with the forgotten Master Password -- how did you do that, specifically?
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The real problem here was that there were not adequate instructions on your site about how to set up and import items once you cancel the old account and open a new one. There was also no explanation about how to export documents, which is apparently difficult. Because I had many documents (mainly photos and PDFs) attached to secure notes, this was a horrible limitation. You could clearly fix that, or at least make it clear up front that these documents are subject to being lost and not easily exported.
Overall, I still like your product, but the documentation on your site was not sufficient, and your support response time is really bad.
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@JDLee - I'm sorry you had a bad experience. Response times are always as quick as possible, but we generally answer user requests and questions in the order we receive them, and how quickly we're able to do so varies significantly by the inflows we're experiencing at any given moment. Apologies for the wait.
I also think we might have misunderstood one another: when we say "Documents," we mean something very specific: Documents are a new item category (well, new-ish) that only exist in 1password.com account/memberships. If you're using standalone 1Password, although the files you may be storing there can be called small-d documents, they're considered attachments, because they're directly attached to another item; it's not possible to upload files on their own in standalone 1Password. In 1password.com accounts, external files are directly updated as separate items, called Documents, not attached to other items.
I'll mention your comments to our documentation team, but one of the reasons we don't try to publish a comprehensive guide for this is due to how many different variables there can be for individual situations. For example, when a Master Password is forgotten, many users will simply be locked out of their data -- but some will still have access via biometric methods (Touch ID, Face ID). What device they're able to use biometry on, and whether they have other accounts, standalone vaults, or neither would also affect how we would suggest someone proceed in such a case. In short, it would be difficult to write a guide that covered every variable and potential situation, and if we did, it might easily confuse a significant number of users who might wind up in a worse situation than they would have if they wrote to us for assistance instead. With something as valuable as your 1Password data, I'd rather have people get individual instructions that will have the best chance of working for their specific situation than to try to document every possible combination in one omnibus document.
Were you able to successfully get your attachments downloaded and your data imported into a new 1Password setup, or do you still have questions?
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I was able to get my data imported, but not my attachments (which I believe are the capital "D" documents you refer to).
That information you have given now about how I might have been able to recover documents would have been great to know during the time when I was trying to figure out how to deal with this. Because I couldn't figure that out and needed to move on with things, I deleted my old account and created a new one. There was a time priority to all of this because the whole reason I changed my master password (losing it in the process) was that I had an indication that one or more of my passwords may have been compromised. I needed to change almost every password I have, and I wasn't going to do that without having a 1Password account up and running so that I could save all of the new passwords in it as I was creating them.
I still don't understand what you're saying about "Documents"/"documents" in 1Password. I have 1Password.com. The documents I had consisted of JPG and PDF files that were attached to secure notes. I tried different methods to save those documents and eventually gave up. In my new 1Password account, I have attached two documents (JPG files) in this same manner. They show as "related items" in the secure note I attached them to, and as documents in the "Document" category.
When I originally posted, I still had access to my old 1Password through my laptop that has touch ID. I was able to export a 1PIF file that got me set up on my new account, but it included none of of my documents (which are the capital "D" documents, I believe). The information I read on your site is that documents aren't exported. After reading through what I could find, it seemed to me I had lost access to those documents. And, like I said, I needed to move on with things, so I deleted that account and created the new one. I have no idea why documents aren't included in the 1PIF export. If they were included in the export, it would have made things so easy. The fact that they weren't included in that 1PIF export made me think that perhaps they couldn't be exported at that point (after I lost my 1Password).
More importantly, you included a link above that contains instructions on how to download individual Documents via "Quick Look." If that same link had been included where I found the information about not being able to export the documents, everything would've been fine. It would have taken a while to download each of those documents to my Mac individually, but I would have done that on my own.
In the end, if I understand things correctly now, all it would've taken to make this simple and smooth would have been for you to include a statement in your online documentation about what to do when you lose a master password. There could be a statement that says something along the lines of this:
"Documents are not included in the 1PIF export. However, if you still have access to your 1Password account, you can download them individually using the "Quick View" "Show in Finder" option."
You say you don't want to create a comprehensive guide telling what to do because there are so many variables, and that you'd rather have people contact you individually. That might be fine if your response times were much faster than they are, but it was no help at all for me. In my situation, I believe all there needed to be was a bit more information about how one might download documents if one still has access to their 1Password account via biometric means.
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@JDLee - I'm sorry for the confusion. In your initial post, you said you had a 1password.com account, but in your follow-up you mentioned that you
...had many documents (mainly photos and PDFs) attached to secure notes...
Direct attachments are how external files work in standalone 1Password (they're literally called Attachments in standalone vaults, because they are directly attached to another item). But since this is not the case in 1password.com accounts, I didn't realize that by "attached," you were referring to linking items, not direct attachments.
I have no idea why documents aren't included in the 1PIF export. If they were included in the export, it would have made things so easy.
There are a few reasons for this, but the important point is that exporting to 1pif format in this manner isn't the recommended method of moving items between vaults or even between accounts, because it's unencrypted export, by definition. 1pif files can be read by anyone with or without a 1Password application, and it's not at all secure to leave .1pif files on your computer or anywhere else. 1pif is an export format if, for example you needed a viewable/usable/unencrypted copy of your data to import to another program such as a spreadsheet or a different password manager. But it wasn't intended for the kind of migration you'd already begun. There are better, more secure methods of moving or copying items between vaults or entire accounts, which are indeed documented on our website.
I'm sorry our existing documentation either wasn't easy enough to find or wasn't clear to you, and also that we weren't able to get to your original question here in enough time to keep you from proceeding with the .1pif export method or learning how you can download Document items to your local Mac or move them directly between vaults/accounts.
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