Merging databases [Yes, possible and easier in 1Password 4 for Mac, moved to email]
For various reasons - my 1password database on my Mac and my 1password database on my iPhone are not in sync with each other anymore. There have been changes, updates and deletions made separately to each database. I find the need to merge these two databases without overwriting or deleting any data in each database.
Is that possible to do? If so, how? I'm still running v3 and wanted to resolve this issue before making the move to v4.x
To update to v4.x will I need to update to IOS 7 and to OS 10.9.x?
Thank you.
Bill
Comments
-
Hi @cog2803,
Let's start with the compatibility question; 1Password 4 for Mac requires Mountain Lion or above and 1Password 4.5.1 for iOS requires iOS 7.
In 1Password 4 for Mac, there's an option to merge in your databases when you enable the sync. I'd suggest doing this with 1Password 4 than the more complicated method in 1Password 3. However, in order to make your upgrade process easy, we need more details from your setup.
Would you mind emailing us your diagnostic report to support + FORUM at agilebits.com with a link to this thread along with the answers for the following questions:
- How were you syncing between your Mac and iPhone; Wi-Fi, Dropbox, and/or iCloud?
- Do you have 1Password 3 for iOS on your iPhone or 1Password 4? This image will help answer this:
Let me know when you sent the email, so that I can look for it.
0 -
You say 1Password 4.5+ is able to sync using Dropbox to any other 1Password. Does this mean it's still possible to sync 1Password 4.5 on iOS 7 with iPassword 3 on MacOS using iTunes file sharing? Perhaps only one-way (from MacOS to iOS) sharing, but still possible without Dropbox, right?
0 -
This is a risky (if done wrong), multi-step process. BACK THINGS UP.
To avoid having to do all this work in the future, you should be enabling syncing so that edits on separate devices all propagate across every installation. You're not supposed to have to do the process I am describing here. It only happened because you weren't syncing.
Preparation:
- Disable Dropbox syncing on all devices and computers.
- Delete the old database from Dropbox.
On your COMPUTER(S):
- Open 1Password and Export ALL data to an 1PIF file (call it "computer").
- Delete your 1Password vault/database from the computer (but NOT the 1PIF file you just created), so that you have NO database at all.
On your PHONE(S):
- Enable Dropbox syncing on your iPhone's 1Password so that the database gets copied into Dropbox. Alternatively use iTunes file sharing (since I believe Dropbox doesn't work in 1Password 3 for iOS).
- Disable all methods of syncing on your iPhone again. You should still have the synced file it just created in the previous step, either via iTunes or in your computer's Dropbox folder.
Back to your COMPUTER(S):
- Open your Dropbox folder and open the database that your phone had uploaded.
- Export ALL of the data to a SECOND 1PIF file (call it "phone").
- Delete your 1Password vault/database from the computer (but NOT the 1PIF file you just created), so that you have NO database at all.
- Make sure that your computer and phone have both DISABLED syncing at this point. Also make sure that ALL databases EVERYWHERE are deleted (except the 1PIF files). Particularly be sure to delete the Dropbox database file.
Now to merge:
- Open 1Password on your COMPUTER and create a NEW vault.
- Import the "computer" 1PIF file. I suggest you rename all folders/tags to something like "C-[foldername]" like "C-Whatever" so that you know which items came from the computer. I also suggest making sure all items that were untagged/no folder are dropped into some folder. You can create a smart-folder with a criteria of "Folder is '' (blank)" to identify all items that are not yet in any folder, then select them from that smart-folder and drop the results into a REAL folder. Then delete the smart-folder again since it has served its purpose. If you are using tags instead of folders, you can't use a smart-search to find untagged items (as far as I can tell), but you can at least just drop all non-foldered items into a "computer"-related folder for now to achieve the same thing.
- Now you've got a new database, with all of your old computer's data.
- Next, import the "phone" 1PIF file.
- If all of the phone items imported correctly to your computer, then pick up your phone and DELETE the 1Password app from the phone (or at least its database). Also do a regular iTunes phone sync so that iTunes' phone-backup no longer contains any 1Password data either.
Resolve conflicts:
- Now your computer has a new master-database with all of the old data from both your computer and your phone.
- Go through all items, figuring out which is the latest, which to keep, etc, what data to merge, etc. You can do alphabetical sorting to find items with the same title, and then compare their data/"modified at" times to help you.
Sync again:
- When your new database is completely cleaned-up and merged on the computer, you should enable Dropbox sync on the computer again.
- Then start 1Password on the phone and when it asks if you want to create a new database/load an existing database, choose to load a database from Dropbox.
- Now be sure that all devices/computers are set to sync to the same Dropbox and you will never have to do this crazy dance again.
Edit: Oh... You ended up in this mess because you are only using iTunes File Sharing and therefore don't have any REAL sync methods between your databases. You really need to install 1Password 4 on both your phone and computer and start using Dropbox. Are you aware of how strong 1Password's cryptography is? You could store your database on the NSA's hard drives if you wanted to, and there's not a single thing they could do to get into it. Don't fear Dropbox / cloud syncing. As long as your master password is very strong, there's absolutely no way to hack your database. I used to be paranoid like you until I read up on the math behind password brute forcing: https://www.grc.com/haystack.htm (measure your password there, to see how long it would take to crack).
Mine comes up as: "Massive Cracking Array Scenario: (Assuming one hundred trillion guesses per second) 9.98 billion trillion centuries"
0 -
Hi @buggypac
Thanks so much for providing those detailed steps! As Mike mentioned above, there is a way to merge your database directly in 1Password 4 when setting up sync. 1Password is pretty good at managing conflicts and could save a fair bit of work here. :) Of course, we'd need to see a Diagnostic Report from the user's computer just to be sure that we're providing accurate steps.
It is also important to note that the .1pif file created by 1Password on export is unencrypted so this file must be properly deleted after it has been successfully imported into 1Password.
0 -
@Megan Oh you just gave me an idea.
- Make sure that 1Password 4 on your computer has the "computer" database loaded.
- Do a folder sync in 1Password 4 to a folder on the desktop.
- Now erase your database (but not the one on the desktop).
- Load the phone database on the computer.
- Tell it to do folder sync to the one you made on the desktop.
- Since both databases were originally the same one, you'll have correctly working conflict resolution since all of the UUID's of items will be the same.
0 -
Hi @buggypac
That works as well. :) You can leave out the erase database step though:
- Disable sync on the Mac
- Use File > Backup to create a fresh backup of all your data
- Ensure that 1Password 4 for iOS is synced to Dropbox
- Enable sync on the Mac to the location of the iOS keychain in Dropbox
- 1Password will offer to merge your database
Of course, as I mentioned above, once we get into troubleshooting like this, it's usually best to take a look at a Diagnostic Report to get a better idea of the users' 1Password ecosystem to ensure that our instructions are as clear as possible!
0
