What are "Conflicts" within a record?

hawkmoth

I guess auditing for Heartbleed changes has made me look at my records with more care than usual. Today I discovered a handful of them with a section called Conflict that contains a variable number of rows of odd looking information, such as is shown in the attached image. Where do these come from? Do they mean anything useful to me? The included screen capture is for an airline - this one soon to be completely gone - and several others are also for airlines. But not all of them. (I tried to find a discussion of this, but I failed.)

sjk

Hi @hawkmoth,

Gee, those Conflicts fields sure look similar to mine for a United Airlines item before I finally eradicated them. :)

See @MikeT's replies about them in this topic:

Explain what the Conflicts are in the app [Will write up a doc on this]

Using a custom search / smart folder to locate items with them is handy:

And try using show web form details for those items to possibly spot unnecessary fields to delete that can help prevent conflicts for them from returning.

If you have more questions please let us know.

hawkmoth

@sjk - I have this is my United Airlines record too. :)

But, after reading @MikeT's posts you refer to, I still don't understand what is in this section. Or really what created it. What does that seemingly random stuff have to do with sync conflicts? If I'm supposed to resolve them manually, it would seem like it should be obvious what they are and mean.

I have deleted them from a couple of other records without experiencing any obvious ill effects.

sjk

Hi @hawkmoth‌,

… I still don't understand what is in this section. Or really what created it.

The section gets created automatically, containing data that syncing has detected is conflicting. Quoting from @MikeT's replies:

"If 1Password detects a sync conflict, it will merge it into the existing local copy by putting it in its own Conflicts section. This is just a section, it's not a unique feature or anything like that. We're just putting the conflicting data inside the item itself, so that you can resolve it manually."

And this is what should determine which data is conflicting that causes the section's original creation and subsequent updates:

"A sync conflict means that a file has been updated at identical time and date from two different sources and the service just can't tell which one is the right data."

What does that seemingly random stuff have to do with sync conflicts?

The origin of seemingly random stuff that syncing detects conflicts with can sometimes be found under web form details. And there may be really hidden stuff in the item's JSON. It baffled me for awhile, expecting only item fields like password to appear as conflicts.

"In 1Password 4, when a sync conflict has occurred on one of the item, we will merge the data into the item's conflict section, so that you can fix it manually."

If I'm supposed to resolve them manually, it would seem like it should be obvious what they are and mean.

Indeed:

"I've filed a note with our docs team, they'll write up an article to explain more details and provide guidance on how to proceed."

Asking "does any of this really belong somewhere else in the item?" when examining conflicts data is probably a good basic rule. How to go about answering that is where more guidance can come in.

I have deleted them from a couple of other records without experiencing any obvious ill effects.

I was hesitant to remove conflicts data until realizing that if items still looked and behaved as intended, plus knowing the data has no mysterious purpose, there seemed no reason to retain it. I've never found anything meaningful there to keep. Even a few passwords that have appeared were ones already in the item's active or previously used password fields. And web form or hidden JSON data tends to be extra stuff get stored during item creation, e.g. on a registration page, that doesn't have any value.

Thanks for more questioning this. :)

hawkmoth

@sjk - Thanks for the followup. I've been cleaning up conflicts. One thing I did discover is that if I elected to show web form details while deleting conflicts in the Edit screen, I could delete the main login data like username and password! That was an unpleasant surprise, so I've quit editing web form details. I've just deleted each conflict field. That seems OK. Wonder if they will show up again...

MartyS

And this is what should determine which data is conflicting that causes the section's original creation and subsequent updates:

"A sync conflict means that a file has been updated at identical time and date from two different sources and the service just can't tell which one is the right data."

I know that there's no harm seen in removing these Conflicts sections, yet I will eagerly await the promised documentation on this because I still don't follow the stated logic and/or there's more to it than what we're being told.

Case in point for me: all items are added on my Mac laptop (note the singular reference, even though I have many Macs!), as are all updates or deletions. Yet from time to time when I sync with one of my iOS devices there will be conflicts found. That can't be… for it wasn't possible that any "identical time and date from two different sources" change to have occurred. I don't sync with my portable devices often and perhaps somehow that's the issue but my usage still hasn't changed: edits only happen on one source. Dropbox syncing all the way around, all clocks are the same (as close as I can tell anyway).

This happens with my wife's data as well so it's not isolated to me and something crazy I'm doing. Her pattern of use is even stricter than mine: she doesn't even use the iOS app except on a blue moon and she's certainly not going to add/edit/delete anything there. I run the app for her occasionally just to have the data synced "in case". Conflicts then often appear and confusion reigns supreme.

And to put a point on it: as with many reporting their concern about Conflicts recently, most of the conflicts I've had appear in the past two weeks are from password changes. The Conflicts section will list the most previous password used for the item. That's not a conflict: that's just a fact of the edit on my Mac. It doesn't make sense that syncing with the iOS versions would see that the item on iOS with a password of X and an update timestamp (from my Mac) being before the more recent edit (on my Mac) as a conflict when X is the previous password.

I'll concede the rest of my time to the esteemed staff from AgileBits to educate me and/or improve upon their determination of what is a conflict.

GeniusRedacted

I'm glad I found this discussion. In 1Password3 finding conflicts was a menubar item, not a manually created smart folder.

hawkmoth

I'm not quite as fastidious as @MartyS, but his comments mirror my confusion, despite the efforts to explain what's happening. I've now clean out all my conflicts. I'll be watching to see if I can determine when or if they recur.

CopelandD

+1 @MartyS‌.
I have the exact same issue. I updated all my passwords on Mac post heartbleed and then synced to the iPhone app, only to have lots of conflicts and old passwords saved in conflicts field and some lost data. I never edited any entries on my iPhone. I upgraded the app to the latest version before syncing. Disturbing.

ozarkcanoer

After the latest iOS app update I've started seeing Conflicts appear on recently changed Login passwords. And I made those changes on my Mac. This morning I tried accessing a broker site and the password I was getting from my iPad 1Password wasn't working. When I looked closely I saw that the password on the iPad wasn't what I had on the Mac 1Password.

MikeT

Hi guys,

Those recent conflicts, are they starting to appear more often within the last month than they had in the past? I assume for @ozarkcanoer, it started with 1Password 4.5 for iOS update. What about the rest of you guys?

We have a few bugs that we're investigating in which the 1Password's syncer for Dropbox might re-upload a few items that were not changed at all. That might confuse Dropbox and cause it to create conflict copies of the files, it could technically explain the duplicate issue here. For you guys, are those conflicts showing any duplicated data or does it show different information?

We only detect conflicts when there's a file in the Dropbox folder with the name (conflict copy) attached to it and that's when we merge the data in. It shouldn't do that for any other reasons.

hawkmoth

I'm not sure when the conflicts showed up for the first time, and I've now deleted all of them. However, I am very sure that there were two and sometimes three identical lines in the Conflicts section of the affected records, as well as other unique ones. Is that what you're asking, @MikeT?

kendalllister

I just noticed a few of these Conflicts sections after the new 1Password iOS version. I was similarly confused about what I'm supposed to do about them - nothing in the UI gave me a hint as to the intended action. I deleted one Conflicts entry and then found that I can delete the Conflicts section itself - is that intended? See the attached screenshots.

sjk

Hi @kendalllister,

Yup, it's intentional that the entire Conflicts section can be manually deleted. It'll be recreated automatically if necessary.

I'm not certain what @MikeT was asking, @hawkmoth, but I've seen a few cases of multiple duplicates of fields/values there that were identical to ones in other sections or web form details.

axon

Hi, I have the same issue as @MartyS. I am running 4.3 on my Mac and have 4.5 on iOS. I ran into the conflicts issue quite a lot, whilst syncing changes made on my Mac via Wi-Fi sync to my iPhone and iPad. I am making changes to items on my Mac only and sync both my devices afterwards, which in turn then creates conflict sections on my Mac containing old passwords that were synced back from the iOS devices.
Another annoying thing with Sync seems to be when I delete items on my Mac and sync with the iOS devices, which makes them reappear or changes that I make to item names are being reverted when syncing with the iOS device.

Megan

Hi @axon,

I sincerely apologize for the trouble here. There was an issue in syncing 1Password 4.5 for iOS where the iOS app could assume that its data was newest data. This would result in the newer data from Mac being stored in conflict fields instead of taking the place of the older iOS information.

This issue has been resolved in 4.5.1 for iOS, so you should see better behaviour here now.

Unfortunately, there is no automatic way to resolve existing conflicts. You can create a Smart Folder in 1Password 4 for Mac using File > Smart Folder > Conflict fields are present to see all your conflicts and then resolve as necessary.

If you are still seeing conflicts created in 4.5.1, please let us know, and we'll investigate further!

hawkmoth

@MikeT - I don't know what this contributes to all this, but I have had occasion twice in the last 24 hours to stop syncing to Dropbox, data from Dropbox, and start over. Both time I did this, I found ten records that had new conflicts. It was the very same records each time. After the first time I did this, I cleaned out all the conflicts. But then the same conflicts reappeared in the same set of records.

I'm currently using 1Password 4.4 for Mac and 4.5.1 for iOS.

sjk

Hi @hawkmoth,

Are conflict fields reappearing in that USAirways Dividend Miles item shown in your original post? After removing them from my similar United Airlines item a few times they kept returning until I also found and removed them (plus purposeless others) from under web form details. You mentioned:

One thing I did discover is that if I elected to show web form details while deleting conflicts in the Edit screen, I could delete the main login data like username and password! That was an unpleasant surprise, so I've quit editing web form details.

Any web form field modifications made in edit mode will be tossed if you cancel editing. And the main section username and password fields are the only two associated with web form fields (cf. this).

Before Mac 4.4 and iOS 4.5.1, I did something like this to help be rid of returning conflicts fields:

• On Mac, disabled Dropbox syncing and removed its data.
• On iOS, disabled Dropbox syncing and erased local data.
• On Mac, removed item conflict fields and possible conflict-triggering web form fields.
• On Mac, reenabled Dropbox syncing and waited for its "cloud" syncing to finish.
• On iOS, reran app and selected Dropbox syncing.

After that they did stubbornly return for a single item, which has since been taken care of.

hawkmoth

@sjk - Indeed, USAirways is one of the records that keep resurrecting conflicts. And, so is United Airlines. I'm going to revisit the web form details of those records. Do you think I will be OK if I delete all of them, except for the ones associated with username and password?

I had not previously deleted data from the iOS installations when trying to take care of this. I've just done so. Also, I have deleted all web form details for USAirways and United Airlines, except for username and password. Since I cannot remember exactly what the other records were, even though I am certain it was always the same ones, I haven't tried to track those down.

I'll report back.

hawkmoth

@sjk - OK, so it seems all of the conflicts have gone away after I did the following:

1. Stopped Mac version from syncing and allowed it to delete the data in my Dropbox folder. I manually deleted the 1Password folder in my local Dropbox folder.

2. Stopped each iOS version from syncing in turn, and (new step for me) deleted 1Password data in the advanced section of settings.

3. Restarted Mac version and restarted syncing with Dropbox again. Waited for Dropbox to finish sending the new keychain to the cloud.

4. Started each iOS installation (which now think they are new installations), and went through the process of connecting back up to Dropbox. Allowed each to finish syncing before starting the other.

I observe no conflicts in any records on my Mac now, at least so far. This applies to the two sites for which I edited web form details to remove everything except username and password, but it also means those other records that kept reappearing as well. A search for records with Conflcts produces no results. Maybe deleting the web form details that were associated with conflicts has nothing to do with these results?

BUT, now EVERY record that had an attachment now has two of them, both on the Mac and iOS! Nothing is exactly straightforward, is it? And since deletions of attachments from the Mac currently don't get communicated to iOS, this will be annoying to fix.

Meek

Hi @hawkmoth,

Thanks for the update.

I just had a chat with one of our Developers about this, and it sounds like recreating the data file in Dropbox was the right thing to do in this case. There were some issues with detecting conflicts on Dropbox that should hopefully be fixed now. If you run into this again, please do let us know.

Regarding attachments, I'm sorry to hear that you are seeing duplicate attachments! Did you notice these before upgrading to 4.5.1 and 4.4 by any chance, or did they appear since then?

hawkmoth

@Meek - those duplicate attachments were not there before yesterday when I reformed the database to try to deal with the conflicts. I'm just letting them stay around for the time being, hoping that the routines for deleting attachments and having that sync to iOS are in my near future.

Edit: So after I posted this, I began to wonder what would happen if I deleted the extra attachments in 1Password for Mac and then repeated the whole process of stopping sync, deleting databases from Dropbox, stopping sync on iOS devices, and deleting data from iOS devices. Then restarting sync on Mac, letting it complete, and then redoing things on each iOS device in turn. And:

Guess what? The extra attachments are gone on all three of my installations! Maybe this is a better workaround than duplicating a record and then deleting the old record. History is persevered this way.

And, even though I wonder why, I have no idea why I got every attachment duplicated yesterday and none today, using what I think was the exact same process.

sjk

Hi @hawkmoth,

Thank you for the followup. And of course your patient perseverance to get these issues with conflicts, and later attachments, resolved. I'm really glad to hear that troubles with both appear to be successfully behind you now and hopefully remain that way!

At this point it's still a mystery exactly what caused the duplicated attachments after the first go-round with sync resetting and its rebuilt data. I'll let you know if I have any information about specific reasons. That's never happened when I've gone through a similar process, although my only attachment in the vault I've done it was has been the 1Password 4 license for its Software License item.

It appears to have originated with something in the local 1Password database on your Mac that temporarily propagated to Dropbox and iOS data, then later cleared itself up by removing the extra attachments there and doing a fresh rebuild/resync.

I generally like to treat a single 1Password database on one of my Macs as storing the "pristine" master copy of data that any sync stores and other databases/vaults can be (re)created from. If something did go badly awry it would easier and more reliable to focus on any necessary repairs to that database and cleanly reconfigure everything else afterwards. It sounds like you've now essentially done and accomplished the same thing. :)

hawkmoth

I generally regard one time mysterious occurrences as curiosities toward which little time or effort should be expended to understand. Thanks to everyone who held my hand on this.

I still don't truly understand what causes conflicts, but I'm going to stop worrying about that too, unless they recurr.

kendalllister

Thanks for your response, @sjk.

odysseus

There's some sort of bug in 1Password 4.4 where if you're in "All Items" and search for "Conflict fields are present" and then manually delete the conflict fields for one of the displayed entries, 1Password will display "All Items" again instead of continuing to display those entries whose conflict fields are present.

hawkmoth

@odysseus - for just this reason I usually save the search, which turns it into a smart folder to which it is simple to return, instead of having to redo the search. Just an idea that works for me.

sjk

Hi guys,

The item list for a custom search reverting to All Items after certain actions on items in that list is a known bug. I've added your reports of it here to our tracker - thanks!

hawkmoth

@AndrewParker‌ - I didn't mean to deflect the report. I guess I'd come to think that saving the search is what we're supposed to do, as opposed to being a work around. Sigh.