1PW and Dropbox syncing issue

Fairgame

Hi, providing some feedback for you on syncing issues between 1PW and Dropbox.

I have 1PW 4.2.2 on my iMac. We use Dropbox to sync with 2 other Macs, 2 iPads and 2 iPhone5s.

Today I noticed that one of our "Logins" was not updated. When I checked, the "last modified" on MBPro was Mar18, while the iMac was Mar12).

Strangely, both computers indicated "Last synced" was within a few minutes ago. (Dropbox had sync to my iPhone correctly.)

I noticed that Dropbox was not running on iMac (computer with the old Login from Mar12). However, the sync indicated successful sync.
As soon as I started Dropbox, the new file was synced and all was fine.

My question is why 1PW did not flag that it was not connecting with Dropbox? Instead it indicated that all is in order.

Thank you
Jay

PS: By the way, we now use 1PW on every login and feel more secure! Keep up the good work!

sjk

Hi Jay ( @Fairgame ),

Thank you for the kind words. It's great hearing you've got 1Password securing all your logins now!

The Last synced: … message under Preferences > Sync indicates when syncing last occurred between that selected vault in the local 1Password database and the data sync store that's it's configured with (e.g. an Agile Keychain in Dropbox). Syncing can still occur there even when the Dropbox application isn't running. Here's a basic diagram of the data flow between your local 1Password 4 vault and the Agile Keychain stored on the Dropbox site:

iMac 1P4 vault <---1P4 Dropbox sync---> Dropbox Agile Keychain <---Dropbox app sync---> Dropbox Agile Keychain (on dropbox.com) …

The bold indicates where data is stored; italics where syncing connections are.

So, the Last synced:… message correlates with the 1P4 Dropbox sync part of that diagram. And if syncing is disabled in one spot it can still be happening in others.

I hope that answers your question. Keep those good ones coming. :)

Fairgame

Thanks for the diagram sjk.
So if I understand it correctly, the sync has happened, just not with the latest Dropbox file on the server my other computers were syncing with. Only with a Dropbox file on my iMac.

So maybe this post should be a feature request to check status of Dropbox link if Dropbox is used for syncing.

When I clicked "Change syncing" button and "Disable syncing", the first light for Dropbox was green, the second one was red. If both are not green, there could be a message to check sync status.
The information is there, just buried under several buttons and involving canceling the sync.

Thanks
Jay

Ben

Thanks for the feedback Jay. We are taking steps to make it more clear when sync may not be working the way it is supposed to work. Some of these changes have already been introduced in 4.2.2, with more coming in 4.3.

Thanks!

Ben