Editing attachments
I have two simple text files attached to 1p (using Mac). For the sensitive info in these files, it is much easier for me to just store them as attachments in my 1p. Sadly, I found that making edits to these text files within 1p is lost, even though it asks me to unlock and allows me to save.
So, now I have to save the changed files to my desktop, remove the attachments, and drag them back to 1p any time I make a change. It doesn't make much sense for me to buy or use another product for these couple of text files, because I don't change them very frequently, but when I do change them, I sure would like 1p to be able to keep the changes. I understand that 1p doesn't work this way right now, so I would really appreciate this ability as an enhancement. Thanks.
1Password Version: 5.3
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: OS X 10.10.3
Sync Type: Not Provided
Comments
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Hi @ckp,
I'm very sorry for the confusion about that! Attachments in 1Password work like attachments in an email - in other words, the attachment is static (i.e. read-only) and changes would need to be saved to a new/separate copy of that file.
The reason it works this way is because your attachments in 1Password are encrypted, just like the rest of your 1Password data. In order to view a 1Password attachment in QuickLook or open it in another app, 1Password must make a decrypted copy of that file into a temporary cache on the Mac. Therefore, any changes you make to that file are actually made to the temporary copy. To keep your data secure, the temporary cache is deleted when you lock or close 1Password (and therefore the changes you made to that file are also deleted).
To edit an attachment, you'll need to drag the file out of 1Password to make a copy in the Finder, then make and save changes to that copy. Delete the original attachment from 1Password, then attach the new, edited copy. This is explained in the Edit a file section of this user guide article, although unfortunately it's not made clear in the 1Password app itself.
We have an open request with our developers to make this clear in the UI, possibly with a warning message when opening attachments. I'll add your comments to the ticket in order to let our developers know you lost some data because of that misunderstanding. I sincerely apologize for that!
Thank you for taking the time to contact us about this. If you need anything else, please don't hesitate to let us know.
ref: OPM-2857
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Thanks, I saw that it is working that way. My request is to fix it so we can edit at least some popular file types. Your devs can probably figure something out :)
By the way, in my email attachments, i can indeed edit and save them within the email :)0 -
Hi @ckp,
Sounds like my "email attachment" analogy might not have been a very good example, then. ;)
One theoretical "fix" for this would be to create and maintain our own full-fledged document viewers/editors within the 1Password app. But that's much easier said than done, to put it mildly. We just don't have the resources for something like that, and even if we did, I suspect it would be too much work to justify duplicating functionality which is already included in the operating system, and in other software that specializes in document editing - not to mention the fact that it would stray pretty far from the main purpose of 1Password.
A more realistic "fix" would be to automatically re-attach/re-encrypt the temporary/edited copy of the attachment and delete the original one. That seems more probable, although I'm sure that would also take considerable work, as there are a lot of things to take into consideration with something like that.
Hopefully we'll have a better solution for that in the future. In the meantime, I hope we'll be able to at least include some sort of warning when opening attachments from 1Password, so a situation like yours can be avoided. Thanks for your feedback! We're here for you if you need anything else. :)
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ok, the simple solution for me seemed to be to just paste my text file contents inside the 1p secure notes. so, one file per secure note. that would actually work fine. however, you cant search the secure notes content! ugh! if i put my cursor inside the secure note and click the 1p menu for Find or hit control-f, i throws me out and into my AllItems list. So obviously the find is not meant to be used inside a secure note, although i wish it were. you should grey out the Find menu selection and control-f when inside a secure note, or better just just fix it so you can search within a secure note. foiled for now.
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Hi @ckp,
That's a good point - since the attachments in question are text files, you can simply copy the contents into Secure Notes, so you can easily edit them. Although, like you said, there's no option to search the text in only that one item. I can't make any promises, but I'll can certainly let our developers know you'd like to be able to do that. I think that would be a really useful feature!
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