Max Secure Note size

Wrathwielder

Hi!

I was wondering...what is the max numbers of characters you can have in a secure note in the Windows pgm...?

I have several large notes (over 700 lines - one has 17,743 chars) and whenever I bring them up in 1pwd to edit them all hell breaks loose with Win 7.
Suddenly all the apps I have running will either show black screens or the fonts will be totally messed up. I also cannot close 1pwd without a force quit.
I either have to reboot the system to get everything back to normal, or I can sometimes close all open programs (and kill 1pwd in the task manager) and eventually get things back to normal.
Of course it's VERY difficult to cut down the size of the large notes as I am rarely able to bring them up to cut the lines and paste them into a new note. (sometimes I am able to ctrl-A to get the notes in the clipboard, but then I will have to go through all the motions I mentioned above in order to get things working enough for me to paste into notepad, cut the text down in size, and then paste it back into a new secure note)

Knowing the max note size would be helpful so I can avoid this mess :)

Thanks much!

-Greg

DBrown

My largest Secure Note item (for testing purposes) has 1001 lines of 20 characters each, and I can view and edit it without problem in 1Password 4 for Windows.

I've asked Dev for a definitive answer to your question about a maximum size or character count.

I wonder, though, whether some "special" characters in the text of the Secure Note might be causing the problem, rather than the size of the Note.

Wrathwielder

Hi!
No special chars - just plain text :)
I'm thinking that 16384 is probably the limit - the "problem" note is at 17773 right now.
I've run into this issue with a different "note" program as well (I think it was Agendus)
(for comparison, I have a note with 14576 chars and that one seems to work just fine)
(Oh, and when I've run into this problem in the past, I've eliminated it by continually removing text until it acted "normally")

Thanks for submitting this to Dev! :)

(Maybe it would be possible for them to put in a check and an alert when you try to save something bigger than the max? Would head off any problems down the road...?)

-Greg

Wrathwielder

I spoke to soon - the note with 14,576 chars is also hosing up my system - not quite as bad, but once I even highlight the note (so that the preview shows in the bottom window) I then start having problems with my other running programs (unresponsiveness...i.e. Outlook 2010 stops responding unless I shut down 1pwd - which I'm able to do without force-quitting it like I have to do when editing the 17,773 char note)

So to sum it up, both the 17,773 char note and the 14,576 char note cause problems with my system, although the problems caused by the smaller note are easily remedied by shutting down 1pwd whereas the other note causes issues that aren't resolved without force-quitting 1pwd and any other running apps.

-Greg

DBrown

As I wrote above, though, I have a test Secure Note item that contains just over 20,000 characters, so I'm not able to reproduce the problem just by exceeding any of the character counts you've cited.

If I hear back from Dev about a hard-coded maximum, I'll update this thread.

Wrathwielder

I can send you one of the notes that's causing the problems if it would help. You could bring it up in notepad, copy it, and paste it into a secure note.

-Greg

DBrown

As long as it contains no confidential or personal information, you can send it attached to an e-mail message to support+windows@agilebits.com, along with a link to this forum thread.

svondutch

what is the max numbers of characters you can have in a secure note

@Wrathwielder‌ There is no character limit on a secure note, but displaying an extremely large note might be problematic because we enlarge the (multi-line) edit in detail view so that it will accommodate your entire note.

I have several large notes (over 700 lines - one has 17,743 chars)

@Wrathwielder‌ My advice is to attach those as a text document.

Suddenly all the apps I have running will either show black screens or the fonts will be totally messed up.

@Wrathwielder‌ Others have reported this problem once or twice before, but we haven't been able to reproduce it ourselves. I'm guessing your display driver might be partly responsible.

I can send you one of the notes that's causing the problems if it would help.

@Wrathwielder‌ Please do. I would love to reproduce and fix this. Thanks!

DBrown

As noted above, @Wrathwielder‌, please make sure the Secure Note item contains no confidential or personal information.

Thanks!

DBrown

@Wrathwielder, thanks for sending the contents of that Secure Note item!

I copied the contents to the Clipboard, created a new Secure Note item in the main 1Password program, pasted the contents into the Notes field, and clicked the OK button.

Nothing happened to the display of Firefox and Chrome, running alongside 1Password, and I was able to switch among the several Secure Note items (and other item types) in my vault without any unexpected visual effects, and This PC (viewed in Windows Explorer) looked normal.

ref: /ticket/LCY-27498-323

Wrathwielder

Hi!
Thanks for checking that out!
I am stumped. If I do what you did, after I PASTE into the new note and hit OK, if I try to click on a different note the note will not highlite and the newly created note will still remain selected. If I then bring up another running program, like Internet Explorer, the app will be all messed up with sections being black. If I click back to 1pwd, the screen will now show black with only a border around it. If I try and close 1pwd, it will go away but the taskbar icon will still show a grey background/border indicating it's still active. I will need to open/close 1pwd MANY times, and also open and close several other programs several times before the problems go away. I'll know they're gone when I'm able to bring up 1pwd and it shows the grey background like usual.

I uninstalled 1pwd ver 1 (was still there for some reason), 1pwd ver 4, my ATI (HD 4200) video drivers and Catalyst programs, did a Windows update to make sure I was current, uninstalled AVG anti-virus pgm, rebooted, cleaned the registry of errors with CCleaner, rebooted again, disabled Malwarebytes temporarily, and reloaded 1pwd (latest ver).
Rebooted again. Went into 1pwd. Clicked on the bad note - clicked on another note - clicked back on the bad note - thought I had something here as it hadn't hung yet.
Double-clicked on the bad note to bring up the edit window. clicked in it, scrolled around, hit SAVE.

Was then NOT able to click on any other notes again and all the fonts and windows on the system got hosed again :(

Could you try double-clicking on the note you created and scrolling it around and hitting SAVE and then see if you can click on other notes?

I'm at a loss as to what's wrong. Is there a way to turn debug on and create a 1pwd log that might help us?

Thanks again!

-Greg

DBrown

Well, there's no Save button in the Secure Note editing dialog box that appears when I double-click on the Secure Note item in the list area, but I did open the Secure Note item for editing, scroll down to the bottom of the note contents using the wheel, scroll back to the top using the slider, stopping a couple of times in each direction to double-click on some random string in the note content, and then click the OK button.

I had none of the problems you describe. One of my colleagues in Europe has promised to try the steps you outlined in your e-mail message on his system "tomorrow", so we'll see whether his results are closer to yours than mine.

svondutch

@Wrathwielder I'm afraid I cannot seem to reproduce your problem. At this point, I'm beginning to suspect this might be a display driver issue.

AlexHoffmann

Hi!

Can you please tell us the exact type and model of the processor and graphics card/chip you're using?
We've encountered someone with a similar problem and no apparent cause and we're trying to find similarities.

Thanks

Wrathwielder

Hi!

AMD Phenom II X6 1090T cpu
Radeon HD4290 video (on motherboard)
Win 7 Pro 64-bit

I have the problem both when using the generic Microsoft video drivers, and also when using the latest official Catalyst drivers.

Feel free to send the other customer the file I sent you if you want to see if they can duplicate the issue that way :)

-Greg

DBrown

We probably won't send the file to the anyone else, just in case there's a stray value that isn't obscured. Thanks for your patience!

Wrathwielder

If it will help get this figured out "I" can send the file to them via email or something so you don't have to worry about being involved with the content - let me know :)

AlexHoffmann

There's no need for this just yet. We're still exploring the possible reasons for this. We will keep you posted about further developments.