Secure Note PDF File has been corrupted

vgadey
vgadey
Community Member
edited March 2015 in Mac

I attached a secured PDF file a few years back to 1Password Secure Notes. I had to reopen the file today for something important, and it says the file is corrupted. I am pretty sure the file that I attached was not corrupted. This is the only copy of this file that I have.

Very disappointed and frustrated at 1Password right now. You have failed. Majorly.

Has anyone encountered this problem?

Comments

  • littlebobbytables
    littlebobbytables
    1Password Alumni

    Hi @vgadey,

    Can I ask:

    1. Do you run 1Password anywhere else? Specifically in terms of syncing.
    2. Is this the same copy of 1Password that you used to attach the pdf file?
    3. How far back do your backups go? The list of all backups can be seen in the Backup tab of 1Password's preferences.

    Maybe if we're lucky the file can be retrieved. Obviously we can't guarantee anything but maybe the backups can help. Please let us know the answers to all of these.

  • vgadey
    vgadey
    Community Member

    I used to use 1Password 4 before, and this file was uploaded in 2013 when I used to use 1Password4. Is this an issue with migration?

    My backups unfortunately go only till Dec 2014.

  • vgadey
    vgadey
    Community Member

    I found some older backups with .agilekeychain_zip on my Dropbox but I can't open these files with both 1Password 5 or 4. Any advise greatly appreciated.

  • littlebobbytables
    littlebobbytables
    1Password Alumni

    Hi @vgadey,

    Sadly those old backups in Dropbox are from 1Password 3 and the date associated with those backups suggest they won't be any use to you I'm afraid as they all predate the addition of the pdf in 2013.

    I'm surprised and saddened to hear the local backups only go back as far as December 2014. Did you move from an old machine to a new one at the time? I ask because upgrading from 1Password 4 to 1Password 5 shouldn't have impacted on your backups. We keep up to 24 monthly backups so they should go back further than they have under normal circumstances.

    If December 2014 is the oldest you have it's still worth seeing if it makes any difference.

    1. Open 1Password's preferences and switch to the Backup tab.
    2. Click on the Backup Now button.
    3. Select the oldest backup you have from the list, the one from December.
    4. The Restore button should now be enabled, click on it and work through the confirmation messages.
    5. 1Password will close down to finish the restoration process, launch it.

    Is the PDF file still corrupted? If it isn't and it's viewable you would want to save a copy of it to your Desktop.

    To return to your current vault you would go through steps 3-5 again but this time you would select the backup you just created.

    Do you happen to use Time Machine at all as well? if there were older backups at one point then maybe a copy is still retrievable from Time Machine. If that's a possibility here is what I would recommend.

    1. Enter 1Password's preferences and switch to the Backup tab.
    2. Click on the Show Files button.
    3. With the Finder window in the foreground, open Time Machine which you will find in your Applications Folder.
    4. Scan back as far as Time Machine will let you. The naming convention of the backups is that they start with the word 1Password and then the date in ISO 8601 format YYYY-MM-DD. If you can find a backup close to after when you added the file then you can click on that one backup and restore.
    5. With the older backup restored from Time Machine you can try restoring it as above.

    If you have any questions regarding any of this please do ask before starting.

  • vgadey
    vgadey
    Community Member

    Thanks.

    Few things that happened here:
    1. I moved from Dropbox to iCloud for syncing recently after I upgraded to 1Password5
    2. I moved Dropbox backup files to a nested folder within Dropbox so that its not easy to find (thats where the 2011 backup files are)
    3. I moved from older 1Password (don't remember version) to newer
    4. I moved to a new Macbook
    5. I am not sure why I am missing backups from 2013 and 2014 (till Dec 2014).

    I have tried restoring to Dec 2014 - but no luck.
    There is a possibility Time Machine got my backups that were on my Dropbox - but I don't have a way to access them as my current laptop does not have Time Machine.

    Any other ideas?

  • littlebobbytables
    littlebobbytables
    1Password Alumni

    Hi @vgadey,

    If even the oldest backup on this current Mac is of no use I think we've exhausted the possibilities with your current Mac.

    1. I assume you don't still have access to the old Mac.
    2. but if I understand you correctly you might still have a Time Machine disk from the old Mac?

    If 2. is correct we maybe still have a chance as it seems you can access the backups from another computer.

    1. On your current MacBook go to System Preferences > Time Machine and tick the checkbox for Show Time Machine in menu bar.
    2. Attach the Time Machine drive to your computer.
    3. Click on the Time Machine icon in your menu bar. You should see an option titled Browse Other Backup Disks... (see screenshot below). If you don't see it try holding down the alt ⌥ key.

    .

    Now I'm a little unclear how it works after this point but hopefully it should guide you through the process.

    You'll be looking either for backups in Dropbox or more likely, if you've been a 1Password 4 user you'll want to try looking in the following locations (depending on if you are a Agile Web Store (AWS) or Apple's Mac App Store (MAS) user)

    • MAS ~/Library/Containers/2BUA8C4S2C.com.agilebits.onepassword-osx-helper/Data/Library/Backups/

    • AWS ~/Library/Application Support/1Password 4/Backups/

    If you find older backups you can hopefully copy those files to the desktop on your current machine. From there you can add them to 1Password by going into 1Password's preferences, switching to the Backup tab and clicking on the Find Backup button. You'll select a backup and it will be added to the list so you can restore it.

    Fingers crossed you find something you can use.

  • don_rolfo
    don_rolfo
    Community Member

    Hi,
    I would like to add something to this thread.
    A few days before I changed the syncing to another folder in dropbox. The result was for me the same as for vgadey described above: corrupt pdfs. When I try to open them I get an error message saying that the PDF "eventually is broken or has a format which is not recognized by Preview". As I said, a few days before I still could open the PDF.
    I am running 1password5.1 on a OSX 10.10.2 machine.
    Because I am running 1password on different machines so I could recover the PDFs... but the question remains: why is it happening?
    Ralf

  • littlebobbytables
    littlebobbytables
    1Password Alumni

    Hi @don_rolfo,

    Can I just confirm, when you changed syncing was it literally you disabled Dropbox syncing and then simply re-enabled it for a different location in the same Dropbox folder? and with that one change you're saying it went from being accessible to being corrupted.

    Did you change the Dropbox sync on this machine or was it another?

    Thank you for the answers to these.

This discussion has been closed.