Syncing 1PW 3 and 1PW 4/5

Unforgetable

Is it possible to sync 1PW 3 and 1PW 4/5 installed on two different Mac's. If so, how?

littlebobbytables

Hi @Unforgetable,

You certainly can synchronise between 1Password 3 and 1Password 4/5 on the Mac. It's by far easiest if you're happy to use Dropbox as they handle certain sync issues which then 1Password doesn't have to worry about.

We can supply a set of steps for you if you can let us know a little more about your situation. Is you vault currently in your copy of 1Password 3 and you wish to synchronise it over to 1Password 4/5 or do you have data in both vaults that you wish to see merged?

Unforgetable

Hi @littlebobbytables,
Sorry it took so long before I got back to you.
Thanks for answering. I have data in both vaults that I want to be merged.

littlebobbytables

Hi @Unforgetable,

Here is what I would recommend.

Create a backup in both copies of 1Password. This part hasn't changed much between 1Password 3-5. In 1Password's preferences switch to the Backup tab. In there you will find a Backup Now button. If you click that then you know that you have a safety net should anything go awry.

I'm going to assume you have Dropbox set up on both machines. Dropbox will guide you through the process after you register and while it was a while ago that I did so, I seem to remember their guide being pretty friendly.

Personally I would recommend starting with 1Password 3. Enter 1Password 3's preferences and in the General tab there is the Move to Dropbox... which you want to ignore. 1Password 3 no longer successfully detects that Dropbox is running so the button is useless. Instead if you right click on the path above it you will get a small menu with three options. The one that will interest you is the Move Data File to Another Folder.... You can use that to manually move the .agilekeychain into Dropbox and achieve the same goal.

Having successfully moved your 1Password 3 .agilekeychain into Dropbox I would now recommend making a copy on your Desktop of this machine. Again, just another level of safety net (I like to be cautious when it comes to vaults).

Now lets move to your other machine running the more recent version of 1Password. To keep the length of the post reasonable I'm going to point you to our Sync with Dropbox guide to give you a rough overview of how to perform Dropbox syncing in 1Password 5.1, the newest version at the moment. If you're running something older than 5.1 on your Mac then our older guide will have images and instructions that will more closely fit your situation.

The key point is when you come to pointing 1Password 4/5 to Dropbox you want to select the actual 1Password.agilekeychain that is already present from what you did with 1Password 3. Instead of a Create New button you will get a Merge with Existing one which tells you it's going to try and merge.

Now after you've done this you may have some manually cleaning up to do. Every item in your vault has a UUID, a Universally Unique ID. If your two vaults were created completely separately but contain many items in common 1Password won't merge those as the UUID's don't match. Once you've performed this manual clean up once though the two will remain in sync as long as you use Dropbox.

If you have any questions relating from any of the post please do ask :smile:

Unforgetable

Thanks a lot. Great service.

Drew_AG

On behalf of @littlebobbytables, you're very welcome! :)

If you need more help, please let us know - we're here for you!