Dropbox causes major back-and-forth sync issues, across platforms?

nullmaster

OK, so this isn't specifically a 1Password for Mac issue, but since I use it on my Mac the most, I figured I would post it here.

A few months ago, I had to essentially perform a full export of my 1Password records and import them into a completely fresh new database since internal Dropbox sync "conflicts" ate everything alive and my iOS devices couldn't parse the data. I was under the impression that the issue was resolved, until I went and powered up my netbook for the first time in awhile, and the "bouncing" Dropbox updates between machines started up again.

Two related questions (as I didn't see much in the way of posts about this or I didn't search hard enough):

1. Once this issue is resolved permanently on my units, has anyone seen this issue recurrent on their setups?

2. How simple (or more likely, ridiculously difficult) would it be for 1Password to scan its vault file for Dropbox conflicted data and offer to parse/merge the entries such that it would either prevent this from happening in the future or make it easier to resolve?

This unit is likely the last in my setup that had the conflicted sync data, and I'll have to go through all my machines to ensure that is the case. I'm just hoping to prevent it from recurring and also see if anyone had tips/tricks if it is a relatively common issue.

Thanks again for all your hard work and great support. 1Password is still the only program I've wanted or needed to buy for Windows, and it's worth every penny. Take care!

Megan

Hi @nullmaster,

I'm so sorry to hear about the problems you've been having getting things synced up. Do you currently have multiple vaults synced to Dropbox? Because multiple vaults are currently a Mac only feature, if you currently have multiple keychains Dropbox, there's a chance that your iOS device may have found a keychain other than your primary vault, in which case it would have tried to merge databases.

Once this issue is resolved permanently on my units, has anyone seen this issue recurrent on their setups?

If you do not have multiple keychains stored in Dropbox, it sounds to me like your databases may have become unsynced at some point. This would cause conflicts if you edited or added an entry on multiple devices before sync was restored. (I'm just guessing here, it's hard to say for sure without taking a closer look at your system.) In any case, we've made some significant improvements to sync recently so you should not be seeing this on a regular basis.

How simple (or more likely, ridiculously difficult) would it be for 1Password to scan its vault file for Dropbox conflicted data and offer to parse/merge the entries such that it would either prevent this from happening in the future or make it easier to resolve?

1Password does its best to manage conflicts - wherever possible the conflicted data will be stored within the entry so that it's as easy as possible to copy and paste the information into the fields that it belongs in. It should only create a separate conflict entry in extreme cases. I'd be happy to pass along your experience though, and see if we can't improve conflict resolution in the future.

If you do see this issue again, please let me know - we'll want to make sure that syncing is behaving properly everywhere.

And thanks so much for the kind words! :)