Import Question

sshearer

I had been using pwsafe for my password manager and am now switching to 1Password which I have now installed and have working (thanks to help from other users). I wanted to see if I could export the passwords from pwsafe into 1Password. I saw a post that recommended using password gorilla, which I did download and install. It was able to export the passwords from pwsafe and import them into 1Password. However, pwsafe has a couple different groups similar to 1 password (i.e. credit cards, on-line, other and software). When I do the export/import process it exports all the pwsafe entries from every group and imports them into the logins folder of 1 password. Is there a way to import only to a selected folder in 1password? I will also have to figure out how to only export a single group from pwsafe. Has anybody had experience from converting from pwsafe to 1password?

I know I could reinput every entry manually and that would certainly make me very familiar with 1 password but I do have about 350 entries in pwsafe which would take a good bit of time to do manually.

Thank you.

Scott

MrC

Hi sshearer,

The pwsafe program I know about doesn't seem to have Credit Cards, Software, etc. categories. It only has Logins. Which one specifically are you using?

sshearer

I am using the iOS version of pwSafe - Password Safe Compatible Password Manager - version 6.2.2 that I purchased from the App Store on iTunes. Thank you for your question and interest. If there is any additional information I can provide, please let me know.

Thank you.

MrC

If I'm understanding this correctly, you may need to get the Mac (or Windows) version in order to export the database to Tab Separated values, or XML. The Mac version happens to be on sale at the App Store currently. I can't tell if the IOS version has a way to export data (and then you'd have to get it to your Mac or Windows system).

From there, the data is accessible. If saved as Tab Separated Values, you can open the data with a spreadsheet program such as Libre Office (Numbers won't work with this format), and see the values in rows and columns (there are some special settings that are required for it to import properly). With the proper arrangement of columns, you can get it imported into 1P4 as Login items.

As XML, a converter will be required, since the data is more complexly formatted than any human would want to manage, and 1P4 cannot import that directly.

I don't believe pwSafe supports any types other than what is essentially a Login (username, password, URL), but it does support setting an arbitrary groupings / tags hierarchy. This data is available in the export.

So you're going to need to:

1. Export the data
2. Convert the data into a 1P4 consumable format
3. Have a Mac or Windows system with 1P4 installed (even the trial version is fine)
4. Import the converted data into 1P4
5. Sync the 1P4 to your 1P4 on IOS

Can you do 1, 3, and eventually 5?

sshearer

Thank you for your detailed explanation. I don't currently own a Mac (although I hope to correct that in the not too far distant future), but do have a Windows version of both pwSafe and 1P4. I have been able to export the data from pwSafe to 1P4, but every exported item (whether it was in the login, software, credit card or other category in pwSafe) shows up in the login category of 1P4 when it is imported.

Is there any way from within 1P4 to move or copy an entry from one category (e.g. login) to another category (e.g. software license)? I am guessing this may not be possible due to the different field names in each of the 1P4 categories. Although pwSafe does have different categories, it has the same field names for each of the categories and, for example, I ended up usually putting software license numbers in the notes field of pwSafe or the password field of pwSafe. That is presumably why 1P4 is inputting everything into the logins category. The more I think about this, I may have to do the general export/import into 1P4 where every entry goes into the login category of 1P4, then simply delete the non-login entries from 1P4 and manually enter them into the other appropriate categories of 1P4. Fortunately the majority of my pwSafe entries are login entries. I could probably open the exported file with Excel and then copy and past the applicable license numbers, etc. into 1P4 to save some time and hopefully avoid some input errors. I am assuming 1P4 will allow pasting into fields when creating a new entry.

Thanks again for your assistance and any other thoughts or observations you have.

MrC

You're welcome.

With CSV data, 1P4 for Windows can only import into a Login type (and the Mac can only import into Login, Credit Card, Software License, and Secure Note types, and these require separate CSV files, which differ in column specifications). When you create the CSV with the required columns, and then specify the CSV import type in 1P4, this forces the 1P4 category used.

There is no mechanism in 1P4 currently to move a card from one category into another, so creating a new entry and copy/pasting the data is the only method.

Since there is nothing in your export that indicates the type of data that is present in each field (in the event you've usurped, say URL, for your own purposes), and your notes are essentially free-format, there's no way a generalized converter can reliably and accurately detect the data from one of your entries, with say, a Credit Card group tag where your CC data is free-form in the card's notes (each person will format the data their own way, and there are many different data values possible for all the card types worldwide). The complexity, and likely errors, becomes too great.

Converters I've written do support placing items into the appropriate 1P4 categories; however, they require being able to know the card's type/category (because the export is specific about this, and fields are clear and obvious, or because they can be detected the type from matching key field name patterns in the output). You can see in your case, nothing about the "notes" field would reliably indicate the meaning of the data there, and because of the uncertainty, the data would have to be preserved in the notes section anyway (for safety, to avoid loss of data).

sshearer

That makes complete sense. Thank you for the more detailed explanation. I am always interested in learning more and now I am much wiser. I will proceed with doing a complete export/import into 1P4, delete the non login entries and copy/paste those entries from a spreadsheet into 1P4. Thanks again for taking the time to explain this to me. Have a good day.