1Password7, attachments and 1Password.com
It is most unfortunate, how 1Password.com handles attached documents.
It seems the documents are no longer attached to their related records.
A great strength of 1Password for global travelers is to be able to embed facsimile (pdf) images WITHIN a given record.
Why do that? Because, for those of us who travel a lot, having facsimiles of passport, marriage certificates, et can be a life saver.
Just having the numbers may not be enough for immigration officials. They want the original images (proof of marriage to an EU citizen for example). Also, if one loses a passport, having the facsimile on hand makes it much easier with Embassy officials.
Why on earth AgileBits would force these documents to be separate from the meta data that describes them I don't know.
That just confuses things enormously. Truly.
It is the sole reason why I am sticking with 1Password iCloud sync. The same with my friends who travel.
My suspicion is the problem relates to the 1Password.com design. More so than user convenience.
Note, I am a longtime licensed 1Password user, who has not complained once about a great product, a great team.
Until today.
It's a dumb design not allowing me to retain documents inside their related record.
I have 868 records in 1Password, I track a lot. Most records do not have attachments. Those that do are especially important. After transferring the data to 1Password.com the file was much bigger, the records far more numerous, a big confusion.
I deleted the online account immediately and went back to using iCloud syncing.
If AgileBits no longer wishes to support documents, as it once did, then it's time to think about alternatives.
If, in fact, AgileBits is concerned about the storage space such documents might take up.
Then give user an option to upgrade their online storage capacity.
But don't underestimate the diversity of users' needs.
Good software is flexible, adaptive software.
Thank you.
1Password Version: 7
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: 10.13.4
Sync Type: iCloud
Referrer: forum-search:1Password7, Attachments and 1Password.com
Comments
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Hi there @xxx,
What you are suggesting is still entirely possible. Yes, what in standalone vaults are attachments are, indeed re-created as separate Document entries when switching to a 1Password membership. But this is actually in order to increase their usability rather than to diminish it. As separate entries, a whole variety of document types can be stored and more can be done with them. You can still directly link a document with another entry. In fact, you can link the same document with multiple entries without having to store the document multiple times.
Any item in your 1Password vault can be linked with any other item. For example, I do exactly as you mentioned in your post. I have a passport entry in my personal vault that contains my passport number and other information. This entry is linked to two document items that are also in my vault which are photos of the relevant pages of my passport. It is effectively the same as having the photos embedded within the passport entry. The functionality you want is still there and, in fact, more powerful than ever. It is just externally a little different due to how 1Password.com encryption works.
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As a long time 1Password user but new to a 1Password account user, in fact I am on day one of my trial, I am still trying to work out the logic for documents. The answer above has helped but I still have a couple of questions
Having discovered by vault entries are discrete and that I can't share an entry between my private vault and a shared vault (I am right it thinking this, I think) I am having to move items from my private vault to the shared family vault and in doing so the document link breaks.
Passport records and image copies the exact use-case.
I've found that I can copy or move the document to the shared vault but I have to manually reattach them, all a bit tedious to be honest.
Do linked documents download automatically? If I travel with my iPhone\iPad, without internet access, will I have the documents or do I have to do something to get them to download?
Is there anything I am missing?
Thank you for your help.
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Hi there.
I don't want to link.
I want those documents embedded in the record as before.
There is no need to see them in a greater list. It just clutters things up.
I use EagleFiler as a general filing system. Not 1Password.
1Password is about storing certain type of documents that require confidentiality and security.
That's where my brand loyalty lies: trusted security, and convenience.
If 1Password seeks to become a general filing system, it may be time for something else.
Are you suggesting it's a technical, encryption issue, being presented as a new feature?
Previously if I wanted separate documents I could have them. There was a choice. Now there is no choice?
When I first started using 1Password, in the early days, one could not embed a document within a record.
That was no fun. There were documents everywhere, a clutter.
Once the embedding came along 1Password had a whole lot more value. It was great.
That was a great feature: proper attachments. Now AgileBits is presenting it as a liability??
I have nearly 900 records in 1Password.
And what happens if the document links get broken. Is that possible?
Of course it is. Nothing in IT is infallible.
Does one then have to manually redo all the links.
Been there, done that, with other software. It's no fun.
AgileBits has been terrific to date, until now.
Of course, it may be the 1Password data model (design) does not allow for embedded documents?
Otherwise security would be compromised in some fashion?
If so, that's a technical limitation, not a feature. I understand that.
But the company should say so, rather than presenting such limitation as a great new feature.
Incidentally, does this mean iCloud syncing, which does support embedded documents, is less secure???
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@iwaddo You will have to download the documents manually the first time you wish to access them on a new device. After that, they will be cached locally and accessible at any time.
@xxx 1Password is not actually intended as a general filing system. Our main focus is, of course, logins. But there are other items that people wish to store securely, so we have categories for those as well. Part of the reason why attachments are stored as documents is due to how the 1Password.com service and encryption handles items, having each entry be their own discreet item. Having them be their own discreet item, though, does afford more flexibility than attachments.
As for security, not really, both are secure. A 1Password membership does have the benefit of the Secret Key and other login information protecting your account and data but we would not offer iCloud syncing as an option if it were not secure. Breaking into an iCloud account is not an easy task.
ref: JJK-42877-712
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Thanks for the feedback @iwaddo. I'll be sure to pass it on to our dev team. In the meantime, I would suggest going and doing that initial download now for things such as passport photos so that you don't have to worry about it in the future.
-Corey :)
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I will. Another idea might be to have a different icon to distinguish between a downloaded and not yet downloaded document, this would give an easy visual reference.
Ian
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That's definitely an idea. I'll pass it along. :)
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My grievances are totally aligned with @xxx . I tried 1Password for Families about 18 months ago, and the fact that attachments were transformed into these context-less Documents that littered the "All Items" listing--which is the default view when opening up and looking at everything--was impossible to accept. For reference, this is what my categories breakdown looks like:
I have 604 items in total. When I tried out the Families subscription, that number jumped by about 600 more. I have tonnes of attachments. Seeing them all listed alongside the existing 604 entries made skimming and searching just about useless, given that most of these attachments are not meticulously named, because it was not necessary--their context was provided by the pertinent entry they were contained within (attached to).
This should be addressed, really.
On an unrelated note, I disagree with the pricing on 1Password subscriptions--I think it's just too high--but I would pay for it if attachments were handled in a more practical way, simply because I've anchored myself to this service and it would be cheaper for me to pay 1Password than for me to take the time to migrate elsewhere. I have been giving it serious thought, though. Also, have you noticed I'm using version 7? I'm not opposed to spending money on you folks.
I don't need to be persuaded that the new way is superior, because it simply isn't--not from my perspective and likely others. Great, you're optimizing storage for your service, but to our detriment. I'm sure on a technical level I can respect the decision, but not from a user level. I'm familiar with how attachments/Documents work in this new paradigm, and I disagree with it entirely.
For reference, I participated in a similar discussion on this matter back in 2016.
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@danemacmillan Indeed, Documents in your case are a lot more difficult to wield than attachments. When we designed the conversion for 1Password accounts, we did it for people who have 20-30 attachments. 600 is a ton, so I totally understand that the process doesn't scale well up to that amount. It's hard to take every use case into account, and this is an example of when the ones we imagined weren't the same as the ones people actually have.
With that in mind, I'm curious: What's the downside of having this many Document items in your daily use? I'm curious what makes it particularly difficult day-to-day. Since each Document is linked to the item it was previously attached to, you should be able to find that item, then click the Document in it to open it.
In general, what Rick mentioned in the other thread you referenced is still the state of things here, and while we would like to do more with Documents to make them act like attachments, it's still something on the to-do list.
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Adding more feedback. This weekend I converted over from standalone to Family/account. The change in how attachments are handled is really unfortunate for many of the reasons stated above. Consider that the primary use case is "logins" and they entity the login is associated with may in fact have information you need to store associated with it. The attachments are highly correlated with the login entry - independently you loose the context for what the attachment is. In my case I have about 150 attachments with names that are not fully self identifying - being embedded in the entry provided the context.
I was also unaware that moving an entry from one vault to another would break this link. That was extremely tedious reconnecting all of those links after re-organizing the vaults to better support features such as travel mode. The worse part though is the clutter this brings to the item view.
I get the desire to treat attachments as stand-alone documents. However there was already a way for customers to achieve that result by simply explicitly creating documents as stand-alone. Adding the capability to link 2 documents would have been a great feature as long as it was independent of the embedded attachments.
Given were the product stands I would suggest adding a new feature as follows:
- Add ability to "embed attachment"
- Embedded attachments are only linked with 1 entry
- Embedded attachments, even if implemented as standalone documents, are filtered and cannot be seen except via their linked entry
- The system will always preserve the embedded documents even when moving vault to vault
Like most of the people here I have been a happy 1Password customers for a long time. I honestly hate this new behavior. It is going to modify how I use 1Password because things are now really cluttered and harder to use. This means I'm going to have to reduce the number of attachments I add - I have to modify my behavior to better align with the product. This is always a bad approach to product development because it results in unhappiness of the customer and the possibility they will explore alternatives.
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@jeff_greg I am not sure how we formally add support to this point but just posting to say you really have summed up the issue nicely. Lets just hope it is addressed soon, however, I expect the changes that have been made to the database to support this feature are not going to be easy to change.
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i tried to see both sides of this. I can't. i wish i had time to elaborate. I don't. I attached over 200 documents to 1P records. now, when i pull out my iPad or iPhone in airplane mode, i cannot see my photo or pdf attachments because i they require download. Because i thought viewed as attachments in their parent item, I did not create descriptive filenames for my attachments. now, these items garbage up my All item list and my searches. Regardless of naming conventions, the change in the way that attachments are handled is a serious degradation of this software. Please revert to previous behavior, or else provide settings to exclude this garbage from showing up in my all items list and searches as individual items. This really needs to be fixed.
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I'm like everyone else, I like the way attachments work with the standalone vaults. Is it possible to have one vault synced to dropbox and another family vault synced to 1P.com at the same time? This would give me the functionality to help family members who don't use 1P as much as I do and still give me the option to use 1P the way I like it.
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Yes, it is possible to do so, however there are some things that you need to be aware of if you do that. For one, none of the items in that standalone vault will get any of the benefits of 1Password membership. That includes sync, backup, Travel Mode or any of the other benefits of membership. That vault will act as if it was operating on a standalone version of 1Password.
Second, the Primary vault that is generated will be the "Master" vault so to speak. Meaning that if you change the Master Password of that vault to something different from your 1Password membership, that will be Master Password your 1Password app will expect in order to unlock. You will still need your 1Password membership's Master Password in order to log in via the web interface or add a device, though.
With that in mind, if you still want to do that, you can. Open up the preferences window by clicking 1Password>Preferences in the menu bar and go to the Advanced tab, at the bottom will be an entry to enable local vaults.
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While I too don't like this "change" very much I can live with it. But one thing needs to change for sure: we need a to two-way relation, meaning we should be able to see all items with a relation to a document in the document entry itself. As many have mentioned before, attachment's name weren't very significant because of the context of the item they were embedded in. This is a problem now, because I have several documents I can't identify only by their name or (binary) content. I need to be able to easily find the relating items.
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As a longtime licensed user, with many embedded documents within 1Password 6 -- I am equally distressed and put out by the subscription to 1Password 7. From 936 entries (in 6) to 1736 entries (in 7). Online subscription is certainly not the way to go for me. Too old to learn these new tricks. Just because I can, doesn't mean I should. How do I go about getting lose of subscription and back to licensed (downloaded) version of 7 -- discrete on my apple devices and sync outside the app? Traveling on Monday and cannot do so with subscription model!
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Welcome to the forum, @koy! If you're using 1Password for Mac, links from Documents to other items can be performed, but that creates a one-way link (in other words, it does not link the document back so that opening either the linked record OR the document shows you the other one). However, two-way links are indeed possible: you just need to open each item and then link to the other.
If you've converted your data from a standalone setup with Attachments to a 1password.com account with Documents, and you're finding that some of your older Attachments files weren't uniquely-enough named to recognize them on their own, well, you're not alone. I too had a few Documents files that were named things like "489A1252-40EE-4B7E-B1AF-36ACCADF094B.jpg". While this isn't ideal, it's relatively easy to open the Document, click "Download" (which must be done initially to retrieve the Document from the 1password.com server) and then just look at what it is. If it's a photo of your driver's license, for example, you can click "Edit" and change the name from 489A1252-40EE-4B7E-B1AF-36ACCADF094B.jpg to "Driver'sLicenseFront.jpg." and then link the file to (and from) your actual Driver's License record in your vault.
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Welcome to the forum, @irishsgd! I'm sorry you're not enjoying the current Documents setup.
I am equally distressed and put out by the subscription to 1Password 7.
To be clear, one can upgrade from 1Password 6 to 1Password 7 without becoming a 1password.com member -- which is where the conversion and change of formats takes place. It's also possible to go from a standalone 1Password setup to a 1password.com account without upgrading from 1Password 6 to 1Password 7. The two aren't inextricably intertwined.
If your dislike of the change in 1password.com from direct attachments to Documents is strong enough that you'd like to return to a standalone setup, you can certainly do that, and purchase a standalone license of 1Password 7. Let us know if you need assistance getting switched back.
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So here's a related question and I may have missed the answer: previously when I had an item with an imbedded attachment, and clicked to view the attachment, when I finished viewing it took me back to the previous item (i.e., the parent item). Now I'm just stuck in the Documents list and have to navigate my way back to the original item every time I want to go back to the item I started looking at. This is particularly painful when one item has multiple attachments. Is there an equivalent of a Back button or has that capability been lost as well?
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Thanks Ben, but somewhat tedious if I have several hundred items, which I do. I know you guys don't "vote" on features/changes, but this attachment handling method is a step backward in usability. To the extent you can pass on yet another unhappy user w/r/t this feature, please do. Thanks.
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Yeah, the suggestions to just link back to an item or simply rename an attachment as the other AgileBits Team Member mentioned are very disheartening, and not to mention unrealistic beyond a few items. It's nice and all that they can be polite about it, but it just comes off as insensitive to the issue, because it's always wrapped up in this behaviour-modification suggestion, instead of simply acknowledging the elephant in the room, so to speak--namely, that the current implementation of "attachments" is undeniably half-baked or simply poor. The first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have one. Take that to the higher ups, AgileBits. Currently, I don't really see any of you admitting there's a problem. None of us wants these "tips," which are so facile they're nearly insulting.
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Hi folks,
I’m sorry if we haven’t clearly communicated here. We’re always open to feedback, and recognize that improvements can be made, but part of our job is explaining the current situation and what is available now. We are certainly also evaluating how we can improve upon that.
Ben
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email sent to Dave Teare
dave_teare@agilebits.comDave,
As a faithful, longtime user I can’t tell you how disappointed I am with the way the new mac and IOS software mangles item attachments. Many of us extensively used the attachment capability on earlier software and it is now severely AFU.
Changing from embedded attachments to an individual entry for each attachment has huge drawbacks and has been frustratingly implemented.
First, this adds hundreds of cryptically named items to my database, making it cluttered and very difficult to search. Clicking on a linked attachment jumps me to that record, and deletes my search criterion. The attachment item has no link back to what used to be the parent item. A forum suggested workaround to link the “attachment” item back to the parent is extremely tedious and would require too much time to be practical. The ability to search by number of attachments is now broken.
Second, copying or moving a parent item from one database to another does not include the attachment item(s). Huh?
Third, in IOS, i can not view an attachment while offline unless previously viewed and downloaded while online. Huh?
I have always been impressed with your software and most happy to pay for upgrades. Now, as you are allowing, asking, encouraging, or pretty much coercing us into a detested subscription model and the use of a 1Password subscription account, your software takes a huge leap back in usability?
I hope that Agilebits recognizes what a huge problem this is. Team member forum comments would indicate otherwise. I realize that we can revert to old software or decline to use a subscription account, but why should this be necessary? I hope that this does not indicate a shift in emphasis toward corporate users and away from the individual users that have supported you for so long.
The best “fix” here, would to be to revert back to embedded attachments. However, I can’t believe that the terrible side effects of this new implementation were simply overlooked and so, I suspect that this best fix is not likely to occur.
So, what else can be done? some things…
create a preference to allow attachment items to be excluded from view in All Items, searches, etc.
automatically create links in attachments back to their parent item.
when moving or copying a parent item, default to including attachments, with an option to exclude if desired.
fix the “number of attachments” search item
on IOS, automatically and fully download all attachments for full access offline without a prerequisite preview.I have strongly recommended 1Password to many users over many years. A few months ago, if you had told me that I would now be researching the capabilities of other password manager software, I would have thought it highly unlikely. 1Password has always provided fantastic software and wonderful support to it’s users. I eagerly look forward to see how this problem will be handled.
Sincerely,
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This email nicely echoes much of the concern previously voiced in this thread into a single post, I also look forward to the response.
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Let me add my voice to this discussion. The current implementation of requiring documents to separate entries instead of be embedded is not very user friendly and makes it difficult to share. I would encourage Algilebits to take this feedback from their customers.
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@Tribruin: Thank you for chiming in! It's always good to get constructive criticism and feedback based on different use cases. In that spirit, I'd like to hear more about how Documents and the associated "recent items" feature are negatively impacting sharing for you. As ben mentioned, this is how things work today, but we'll continue to improve the workflow, and perhaps we can help with your use case too in the future as we do so.
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