Cannot enter carat symbol within master password

jason_muay_thai

Hi,

I have a Mac Mini, with a bluetooth keyboard, and I cannot enter the ^caret symbol which is one of the symbols used within the master password that I set up on my macbook pro previously.

If I type the password in plain text, the keyboard seems to work fine.
Strangely, I cannot then copy and paste this text??

This is the same for the main app or the browser extensions.
No problem on iOS, Android, Windows, other OS X, or typing ^Caret.
Help!

Cheers
-Jason

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1Password Version: 1Password 5 Version 5.3.2 (532001) Agile Web Store
Extension Version: 4.3.1
OS Version: 10.10.3
Sync Type: Dropbox

littlebobbytables

Hi @jason_muay_thai,

Do you still have the MacBook Pro with a working copy of 1Password for Mac on it?

What I can confirm is that copying and pasting should work. Obviously it isn't something we talk about often as you shouldn't need to but sometimes as a troubleshooting tip it can help determine if there was a typo being made.

My first thought would be if the keyboard layout on your old and new machines match.

My next thought would be if there was any possibility that 1Password on your Mac Mini found an obsolete .agilekeychain at all in Dropbox and that the reason it isn't working is it's not looking at the correct vault.

Both a kind of long shots but they are both valid reasons in the sense that if one turned out to the case it could be the cause. The carot symbol is part of the ASCII character set so it should work everywhere based on the testing that was done here. We're aware that certain characters that aren't handled in a standard way over all OSes can be problematic but that doesn't seem to be relevant here. It would suggest of the two that maybe the Dropbox idea is a more viable reason.

Please do let us know if either thought leads to any sort of breakthrough and if not we will continue working with you on this puzzle.

jason_muay_thai

Hi @littlebobbytables
Thanks for the reply.
How would I eliminate the .agilekeychain option?
Cheers,
-J

Drew_AG

Hi @jason_muay_thai,

How would I eliminate the .agilekeychain option?

The best way to check this is to see if 1Password on your Mac Mini is syncing with the exact same data file in Dropbox as your other computers/devices. You can follow these steps to check that:

• On your Mac Mini, open 1Password and go to the menu for 1Password > Preferences
• Click the Sync tab (if you have multiple vaults, choose the correct one on the left side of the Sync prefs)
• Check the file path for the 1Password.agilekeychain file in your Dropbox folder
• Repeat these steps on your other Mac to see if it's syncing with the same .agilekeychain in the same location in Dropbox

If they are both syncing with the same data file in Dropbox, then that's not the cause of the problem. In that case, I'd like to make sure I understand the exact problem you described in your first message:

I cannot enter the ^caret symbol

Do you mean you aren't able to type that character at all using the keyboard for your Mac Mini? Or do you mean you can't type that character when you try to unlock 1Password? If the problem is that you can't type that one character when unlocking 1Password, how can you tell? (In other words, the characters aren't shown on the screen when you type them, they appear as black dots.)

If I type the password in plain text, the keyboard seems to work fine.
Strangely, I cannot then copy and paste this text??

As littlebobbytables said, you should be able to copy & paste text into the master password field in 1Password. What happens when you try to do that? Do you mean nothing happens when you use the Paste menu item/keyboard shortcut? Or do you mean you're able to copy & paste into 1Password, but it won't unlock your vault?

Hopefully the additional information will help us figure out what's happening here. Thanks in advance!

vplewis

Here's a thought. Option-i ( î )is the keyboard entry on Macs that evoke the caret symbol, but requires an additional keystroke (in this case the letter i) to register. However, Shift-Option-i ( ˆ ) will input the caret by itself.

danco

Not on my bluetooth keyboard. On my keyboard the caret can be obtained by shift-6 ^ or by option-i followed by a space ^. Shift-option-i gives È. For the record this is a British keyboard.

jason_muay_thai

Thanks all. Will check when home tonight (I am in Singapore so out of step with US time zones!)

danco

As you are in Singapore, and one machine uses the built-in keyboard and the other uses a bluetooth keyboard, it is possible that there is a difference in the codes they send.

jason_muay_thai

Ok so I looked at the keychain being used and it's the correct one.

I also typed a ˆcaret symbol into TextEdit, which validates the Apple bluetooth keyboard is working, and pasted it at the appropriate point into my password (rather than copying the whole password) and it still didn't work.

If I select the 1 Password entry box, and attempt to type ^ (shift-6), no character is recognised. But if I type the same thing into TextEdit, I get ˆcaret. All other symbols along the top row appear to work also. WTF??

If I change my password on the other laptop, and exclude this troublesome character, will I be able to unlock 1 Password with the new password on the mac mini with the issue?

Drew_AG

Hi @jason_muay_thai,

I think there might be a few things that are contributing to the problem and causing some confusion. The first is that there are a few symbols that look similar to each other, and it sounds like you might not be completely sure of which one is used in your master password. On my keyboard, Shift+6 makes the ^ symbol, and Shift+Option+i makes the ˆ symbol. I can also press Option+i and then a vowel to make â, ê, î, ô, or û. There's also the ‸ symbol (although I'm not sure of the keyboard shortcut for that one).

I believe the only one of those that is a standard Latin (ASCII) character is ^ (i.e. Shift+6 on my keyboard). The reason I mention that is because the other characters that look similar might cause a problem if used in a master password, and that's because they are treated differently on different systems/setups, even though it might look like you're typing the same character. We have more information about that here: Should I use special characters in my Master Password?

Another thing that might be causing some confusion is that the keyboard layout for the keyboard you use with your Mac Mini might be different than your other devices (which danco mentioned). Does Shift+6 create the ^ symbol in TextEdit on your Mac Mini? If so, it should work the same way in 1Password.

So the first thing you'll want to do is determine which exact character is in your master password. If it is the standard Latin ^ character, that should work fine, although I don't know why nothing would be entered when you type that in 1Password. We can try to figure out another way to enter that character to verify if it works, but you also might consider changing your master password.

On the other hand, if you're using a character which is not a standard Latin (ASCII) character, I think you'll definitely want to change your master password from another device where it works. The only problem is that in order for a new master password to work on other devices, you would still need to unlock 1Password with the old master password one more time in order for that change to sync. Since you aren't able to do that on your Mac Mini, that would still be a problem, and you'll need to take some extra steps to get that to work (but we can certainly help with that).

One more question - on your Mac Mini, did the same master password previously work? If so, when did it stop accepting your master password?

Let us know how it all goes, thanks!