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How to get one Mac's keychain to absorb passwords from keychain that a now-dead Mac used to access?

lemonkefir
lemonkefir
Community Member
in Mac

I had two Macs that each accessed a different keychain (within one 1Password account) in the same Dropbox account. This happened because somewhere along the way, through updates and mix-ups, the two Macs stopped sharing the one keychain and started using their own separate one each. But both computers have been used to access the same online accounts, so there are double-up entries between them. And probably some defunct passwords saved, too. I always meant to amalgamate the two keychains so that both Macs accessed the one and only single file in Dropbox but I never got around to figuring out how. Now one of the Macs has gone belly up and so I want to get the remaining Mac to pick up and absorb the passwords from the keychain the dead Mac used to access. But I seem to have several (more than two, even!) different keychain files floating around in Dropbox and I can't work out which is which and what do do with them once I've worked it out. I want to clean this all up so there's just the 1x master keychain in Dropbox. How can I do this so I don't lose passwords, write over new passwords with the old ones by mistake, or otherwise stuff it up? Please help!

1Password Version: 5.3
Extension Version: 4.4.3.90
OS Version: 10.10.5
Sync Type: Dropbox
Referrer: kb-search:merge data from 1password mac that won't boot

Comments

  • littlebobbytables
    littlebobbytables
    1Password Alumni

    Hello @lemonkefir,

    So there are going to be two key stages, the first is to identify the correct Agile Keychain and then the second is to merge.

    For the first stage I think the easiest way to proceed is to try adding each Agile Keychain, one by one, as a secondary vault. This way it allows you to figure out which Agile Keychain is the correct one without any risk to your primary vault.

    1. Launch 1Password and use the menu option File > Backup so you have a safety net (it shouldn't be needed but always better safe than sorry).
    2. Switch to the Sync tab in the preference window to check and see what Agile Keychain this copy of 1Password is currently syncing to - you will want to ignore this Agile Keychain for everything that follows.
    3. Close 1Password's preference window.
    4. Double click on the first Agile Keychain. You will see a window titled Create New Vault (see the image at the bottom of the post) and what it really means is create a new vault in this copy of 1Password based on the contents of this Agile Keychain. The vault password it is asking for is the password for this Agile Keychain.
    5. If you can't unlock the Agile Keychain then it's probably not the Agile Keychain you're looking for. If you can unlock check the contents and see if it's the Agile Keychain you want to merge.
    6. If it isn't the Agile Keychain you want I would suggest moving it from Dropbox to somewhere safe just while you finish the process. If you managed to add the Agile Keychain then with that vault active you can use the menu option 1Password > Delete XXXX Vault... where XXXX is the name of the vault. After that you can safely move the Agile Keychain to one side.

    So at the end of this you should have a number of Agile Keychains put to one side and be left with two in Dropbox, one that you are currently syncing to and the other that you want to merge the contents of. So what to do next?

    1. Open 1Password's preferences and switch to the Sync tab. Change the sync option from Dropbox to None. In the confirmation window that pops up tick the checkbox titled Delete data from Dropbox and click the Disable Sync button. Don't worry, this will only delete the Agile Keychain that you are currently syncing to and you know you have the contents of that in your current primary vault. In other words no risk.
    2. Change the sync option back to Dropbox but select the other Agile Keychain this time. 1Password will ask if you really want to merge. I won't lie to you, there is going to some manual clean up required but you do want to merge.

    What can you expect to find in your merged vault?

    We adopt a conservative approach. We will only merge items from two vaults if they have the same Universally Unique ID (UUID). If they don't we treat the as individual items. They can share the same title, username and password but unless the UUIDs match they're treated as separate items. In these instances you will see duplicates requiring you to manually remove one. When you do this I would recommend ensuring you don't have any unique information held only in one copy. If an item in each vault has the same UUID we will merge the two. Where the data is the same in both it's easy, there is nothing to do. When there is different data in each we will keep one set of the data where it normally resides and place the other set in a custom section titled Conflicts. This way we don't risk throwing anything important away and instead leave it to the user to ensure the good data is kept and the now obsolete data is removed.

    If you have any questions before starting please do ask :smile:

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