Sync from iOS to Mac

ScatterbotsNY

I have owned 1Password for a long time, on both MacOS and iOS. I have used wi-fi syncing from my desktop Mac to my iOS devices. It has worked fine. Last summer (2013) the hard disk which has my home directory crashed on the Mac. Completely dead, and as luck would have it, so was the backup. I sent the disk away to Seagate to see if they could recover data from it, but it really was dead.

I do have some backup of my 1password data, but it's from the summer of 2012. I've been using that on my Mac, but it happens that I also have an iPod touch and an iPad where the 1password data would have been synced up within a few weeks before the hard disk died.

What I want to do is go to a new account on my Mac, startup 1password with an empty database, and then sync from the iOS devices to the Mac. Will this work? I see a lot about syncing from the Mac to a new iOS device, but not going in the other direction. I'd go ahead and just try it, but I only have two chances to get it right.

My Macs are running MacOS 10.6.8, and 1Password version 3.8.20. I don't have my iOS devices here, but they'd be running the most recent version of iOS 6, and whatever version of iPassword was around last summer. Eventually I'll need to merge the 1Password data currently on my iOS devices with the data currently on my Mac (to pick up accounts/passwords which have changed since July 2013), but that'd be easier to do if both collections were on my Mac where I could export or print them out.

Megan

Hi @ScatterbotsNY,

It should be a simple matter to get the data from your iOS devices to your Mac, but I will need to know what version of 1Password you have installed on your iOS devices to give you specific instructions. Wi-Fi sync works differently on version 3 and version 4, so if you have 1Password 4 for iOS on your iOS devices, we'll need to add a few extra steps to get things behaving properly. :)

ScatterbotsNY

On all my iOS devices I have 1Password version 3.7.2
And the version of iOS is 6.1.3

Megan

Hi @ScatterbotsNY,

Since all your devices are using 1Password 3, you should be able to merge your databases simply by enabling Wi-Fi Sync. If you'd like to go the export route and put your iOS data into a clean install of 1Password, I'll need to see a Diagnostic Report (just to confirm where you 1Password data is stored).

Using your browser please download a small standalone tool from us that will run a networked copy of our diagnostics tool.

http://i.agilebits.com/kyle/tools/1Password_diagnostics.zip

After the download is complete, use Finder to locate it. It should be in your downloads folder. If the file ends in .zip then your browser has not already unzipped it. Please double click it to expand it.

The expanded file will have a "Unix Executable File" named 1Password_diagnostics. Double-clicking this will cause a Terminal window to open and download some files it needs. (Note: If you use OS X Lion or Mountain Lion, you may need to right click the file, choose Open, and click Open on the dialog).

Once it completes it should open a window in your browser with the results. Please click File->Save As to save this file to your computer. Please save it as "Page Source" or "HTML" if there are options for this.

If you do not get a report created, please copy and paste the output from the Terminal window so we can take a look at the errors that were created. This will help us figure out where the problem is in creating the diagnostics report.

Then attach the entire file to an email to us: support+forum@ agilebits .com

Please do not post your Diagnostics Report in the forums, but please do include a link to this thread in your email, along with your forum handle so that we can "connect the dots" when we see your Diagnostics Report in our inbox.

Once we see the report we should be able to better assist you. Thanks in advance!

ScatterbotsNY

Thanks for another quick reply.

I'm not sure I understand what the diagnostic program would be doing, if it is run on my Mac. What I was thinking of doing was to go to a MacOS account which has not run 1Password, and then run 1Password on that account and sync the iOS device to that brand new database. I assume that if the diagnostic program is run on my Mac, it's only going to be able to tell me about the status of 1Password under the account I'm logged into. And the way I envisioned doing this, that account won't have any 1Password info.

However, it sounds like I should be able to run 1Password on my Mac with the 18-month-old snapshot of my password info, sync the iOS device with the newer snapshot to that, and everything will sync up okay. And 1password will sort out which entries are the newest in each of the snapshots, and update both the Mac and the iOS device to have all of those newest entries?

Megan

Hi @ScatterbotsNY,

I'm sorry if I confused things for you here! In this case, the Diagnostic Report would tell me where your 1Password data is stored on your computer, so that I could give you better instructions on how to move it to create the new empty database to put your iOS data in. I didn't think about creating a new user account - that would work as well :)

However, let's try it the easy way first and just see how Wi-Fi sync matches things up. It's not a bad idea to run a backup of your data on both devices before you try this merge though, just in case. :) On your Mac, simple go to File > Backup. On the iOS device you can backup here: More > Settings > Database > Backup and Restore. You might see a few conflicts if you have updated the same entry on both your Mac and iOS device, but since it sounds like most of your entries were updated on iOS, you should be fine.

Please let me know how the merge goes - I'll keep my fingers crossed that things match up nice and smoothly for you!

ScatterbotsNY

Well, I finally got around to trying this. I went all this time where it seemed that the only time I remembered that I wanted to merge the databases where when my iOS devices were at home.

So far I've only tried merging from one of my iOS devices. I did make extra backups of both my mac and the IOS device before I started, but I'm cautiously optimistic that "the right thing happened". It's nice to know that I can make backups of the database that exists on the iOS device, and it's done separate from the usual syncing operation, and that I can pull that backup from the iOS device and save a copy of it elsewhere.

So I think I'm okay, or at least "as OK as I'm going to get"! :)
(it is possible that there were passwords on my broken hard drive which were never synced to one of my iOS devices, but there's nothing I can do about that)

Megan

Hi @ScatterbotsNY‌,

Thanks so much for updating me here! If you do run into any snags, you know where to find us. :)