Secure Note Content Duplication Bug

cmonkey

I'm running 1Password 5 on Mac and iOS and have had a frustrating bug dating back to 1Password 4, where the contents of a secure note keeps duplicating itself. One thing I notice is that it happens to secure notes that are longer in length. This issue has affected me and a family member with separate 1Password keychains.

It's very frustrating because I add content to that secure note without realizing that it repeats itself (now many times over) and so the new additions mean that certain segments are not exact copies and then I have to go through and bit by bit make sure that I have everything before deleting the duplicated content. I finally sat down and did this and cleaned it all up to where there was only one instance of everything, and put that all into a new secure note (in case the old one was corrupted somehow) and then synced. Everything was fine for awhile and then today I noticed it happening with the new note, yet again.

Short of breaking that info up into many shorter secure notes (not very convenient) I don't know what to do.

Thanks everyone for the help in advance. I am running all the most recent versions of iOS, OSX and 1Password on those machines and devices, if that helps.

littlebobbytables

Hi @cmonkey‌ Just before we place a bug report can I ask what sync method you've been using and have you attempted to reset the sync data at all? Just a couple of things off the top of my head to help narrow down what may be happening. If you haven't tried resetting sync would you consider as a troubleshooting step?

MartyS

@cmonkey‌, one thing to look carefully for within these Secure Notes is if you see a "fence" of equal signs anywhere… something like in this example:

line 1

line 2

=====

line 1

line 2x

It you do find something like this (and you didn't have such a line of equal signs on purpose), it's an indication that 1Password has detected a conflict between edits made on your various devices using 1Password.

Ben

Excellent point. Thanks for chiming in, @MartyS!

cmonkey

Yes, I see that fence of equal signs wherever there is duplicated content. I have narrowed down the issue: it happens most if not all of the times I edit a secure note in iOS (running latest version on iPhone 6). Doesn't happen when using 1Password App on OS X (also latest version). I'm syncing via dropbox. Would switching to iCloud help by chance? This is a very annoying bug and I've unfortunately lost a couple important things in trying to keep just one set of the same content.

mrgjlgx

I am seeing the same duplication problem, but the problem also happens in the "Notes" field for logins, as well as for Secure Notes. I have only ever sync'd via WiFi. I am syncing the following devices: 2 Windows PCs (Windows 7), 1 iPad 3, 1 iPhone 5S, 1 iPhone 5 - in both directions so that all devices are in sync. All have the latest versions of 1Password, as of 11/26/2014, all IOS devices are running IOS 8.1.*. It only seems to happen to notes that have been edited. For each edit of an item (login or secure note), it puts this separator "===". What I hoped would happen is that it would pick of the latest version of the "Notes" field, as well as the rest of the item. In other words, I wouldn't expect 1Password to merge any of this info - only to keep the most up-to-date version of the item. (I did have 2 items that had a "conflict" because I accidentally edited them on 2 systems before syncing, but the rest of the dozen items that have this duplication were ONLY edited on one of the two PC's.) Very frustrating since I have spent hours entering 150+ items - and I'm getting my wife up to speed. But we will have to halt all of this until this bug gets fixed or the number of items that will have to be carefully evaluated and re-edited will continue to grow!!!!

Andrew_AG

The good news is that our developers are working on a fix to keep this from happening. I do apologize for the inconvenience here, but we'll do our best to get this sorted for you as soon as possible!

ref: OPI-1065

Olympian

This may be another appearance of the same bug;

I create a Secure Note on the iPhone by pasting from the clipboard. I save it and then re-edit it but when I re-save it, the contents of the clipboard are added to the note again under a ===== separator (Ver 5.1.2)

littlebobbytables

Hi @Olympian‌

Does this happen with any change you make or could it be something specific to the changes you made on that note? We have an odd bug report connected to changing the date format and I wonder if that's connected to what you're seeing. I ask as you don't mention sync as being a possible culprit.

Olympian

I have tried to reproduce this behaviour today without success. It was syncing with Dropbox at the time.

When I can reproduce it again, I'll let you know.

Drew_AG

Hi @Olympian‌,

This definitely sounds like the known issue our developers are working on, as mentioned earlier in this discussion. I'm sorry for the inconvenience! I believe it doesn't always happen reliably, so it might happen sometimes but not others. You can let us know when it happens again if you'd like, but our developers are definitely aware of the problem and will hopefully be able to fix it soon.

Thanks!

cmonkey

Hi folks,

I'm wondering if the duplicated content in secure notes bug has been fixed yet. I just updated 1Password and see that I'm still getting duplicated content in my secure notes.

I have narrowed it down to a reproducible instance: whenever I edit a secure note in iOS, it duplicates the entire note's content when saved. I do not have this issue in 1Password for desktop. So for now, I've resorted to just creating a new secure note on iOS and later adding it to whatever existing secure note I wanted to put that info into once I get back to the desktop 1Password.

Thanks for any help you can offer!

MikeT

Hi @cmonkey,

Not yet, we think we found the actual cause behind this and it might be behind a few other Dropbox related bugs we saw as well, like a duplicate URL field after saving the change.

We're working on fixing this as we speak and it should be in the next stable updates to both Mac and iOS apps but no promises yet.

cmonkey

@MikeT thanks for the heads up and it's good to know that the right folks know about this issue. Hopefully it gets resolved soon ;)

MikeT

Hi @cmonkey,

We've just submitted the 1Password for iOS 5.2.1 update to Apple with this fix. Hopefully, a quick approval from Apple and you should have this fix working relatively soon.

cmonkey

Oh awesome! Thanks for that bit of insider info ;)

MikeT

You're welcome!

Please do let us know if it is a solid fix once you get the update.

revlisoft

Great. I'm definitely looking forward to this. As editing large notes in the iOS app for iPhone 6 plus is very cumbersome. I can't highlight or scroll up during edits.

Megan

Hi @revlisoft ,

Our iOS developers are working to ensure that scrolling in Secure Notes is improved as well. :) We're all looking forward to these fixes being implemented, believe me!

revlisoft

Great to hear it's being worked on. In addition to the scrolling trying to highlight more than 1 screenful of text on the iPhone 6 plus doesn't seem to work.

MikeT

HI @revlisoft,

In addition to the scrolling trying to highlight more than 1 screenful of text on the iPhone 6 plus doesn't seem to work.

The overall Secure Notes experience is definitely not optimal right now, we're planning right now to simplify it and improve it greatly in a future update. We'll get it out as fast as we can but I don't have a timeframe on this.

ag1pwun

I was trying to print a single secure note item and went to the forum to see how to do it (File > Print prints them all). I found Item > Share > Print and used it. But when searching the forum I saw there were issues with editing/syncing secure notes that caught my attention. Some users have apparently lost data. So I tried to edit a fairly large note and unfortunately found some serious UI issues when doing so. Large blank spaces would open up, the border lines around the note would come and go - pretty scary. There is no way I would make a change and try to save it.

I have a lot of passwords but I also have some very sensitive financial information in several secure notes. Information that's taken a good amount of time to assemble. For now I'm going to place my secure note info in text files and store them in an encrypted disk image for safe keeping. Unfortunately, I'm also going to have to research other password apps because this issue is very unsettling. And the problem with that is, what issues are they going to have?

1Password for Mac v5.1 (510035); MacBook Air iOS v10.10.2

cmonkey

I have the same concerns as @ag1pwun One of my secure notes that has a large amount of vital information got duplicated so many times that it was a mess trying to sort through it to distill it back down to just one instance of each bit of important information. After I figured out that it was only being duplicated when being edited in iOS then I stopped editing secure notes altogether in iOS and would just jot things down to add them to my secure notes on the desktop version of 1Password. Hopefully as @MikeT here says this bug will be squashed soon.

Drew_AG

Hi @ag1pwun and @cmonkey,

I'm sorry you've been having various problems with Secure Notes! These are definitely high priority issues for our developers right now, and hopefully this will all be resolved soon.

@ag1pwun, I noticed you've also posted about issues with Secure Notes in a couple other discussions (I replied to your message in this thread, and Rick responded to you in this thread). To avoid confusion, it will help if we can keep the conversations about those issues going in those discussions (if necessary), and keep this thread focussed on the issue of duplication of Secure Note content.

Thanks so much for your patience, we truly appreciate it! :)

iBarney

I'm using 1Password Mac 3.8.22 (Snow Leopard) and 1Password iOS 4.5.3 (iOS 7.1.2) on iPhone and iPad. I must say that I still face the described duplicated notes problem (today on my iPad), so I guess you dont't plan to fix it for older versions? I'm afraid I will loose data if I go on using your apps, as I in addition today found out that my iPhone 4 didn't sync with my one and only dropbox 1Password.agilekeychain, allthough it had the correct set up to do so (and it never gave me an error message that it did not sync, it even updated the sync date). I now merged the keychains in spite of the warning not to do so, seems it did it right for now. Should I go on using your apps (with the risk to loose data) or should I wait until I can use the newest versions on all plattforms?

littlebobbytables

Hi @iBarney,

As 1Password 5 was offered as a free update to 1Password 4 there is no way (that I'm aware of) to update previous versions. My understanding is it's a limitation to Apple's stores, both the App Store and iTunes. It means that updates in the iOS version are always only for the latest version and the same for the MAS version. If we stop selling one version we can no longer push updates either - again, my understanding is Apple really support just one version in their store, even if they allow older versions to be downloaded only for an iOS or OS X compatibility reason.

Now we do allow access to older versions on our own site but we follow the same policy here. Realistically 1Password 3 for Mac was last updated back in 2012 and while we offer technical support as best we can, updates the the application won't happen now.

Sorry about that.