1Password Mac forgot it was syncing to Dropbox

Options
slessard
slessard
Community Member
in Mac

Until very recently 1Password (web store version) was syncing fine between my Mac and my iPhone just fine. Yesterday I changed an email password on my Mac and discovered the new password was not syncing to my phone.

I checked 1Password's settings on my phone and I can see it still thinks it is syncing with Dropbox. When I checked 1Password's settings on my Mac I discovered it no longer thinks it is syncing with Dropbox. Upon further investigation I found that the vault on my Mac was stored in /Users/lessards/Dropbox/1Password.agilekeychain and had a modification date of October 8, 2016.

So I told 1Password on my Mac to sync with Dropbox, pointed it to my Dropbox folder and discovered that instead of finding the existing vault at /Users/lessards/Dropbox/1Password.agilekeychain 1Password wanted to create a new vault at /Users/lessards/Dropbox/Apps/1Password/1Password.agilekeychain. I reluctantly agreed because I could not find a way to force 1Password Mac to use the existing vault. The problem then became that my iPhone was still syncing to Dropbox/1Password.agilekeychain so I had to tell 1Password iOS to stop syncing, then start syncing again with Dropbox. At that point 1Password on my phone asked me which of the two vaults to use. I selected Dropbox/Apps/1Password/1Password.agilekeychain (the new one) and sync is working again...

...but I have to ask what happened to all the data in the old vault?

Did everything get migrated to the new vault? (A diff between the old vault and the new vault (using Beyond Compare) shows many, many files in one vault or the other vault, but not in both vaults.)

Is it safe to delete the old vault?

How did 1Password Mac suddenly forget it was syncing with Dropbox?

1Password Version: 6.3.3
Extension Version: 4.6.1
OS Version: 10.12
Sync Type: dropbox

Comments

  • Drew_AG
    Drew_AG
    1Password Alumni
    Options

    Hi @slessard,

    Thanks for reaching out to us about this! I'm sorry to hear you ran into some trouble when syncing via Dropbox, but glad you were able to get things working again.

    ...but I have to ask what happened to all the data in the old vault?

    From your description, the original sync file hasn't gone anywhere and is still in the same place it was before, which is: /Users/lessards/Dropbox/1Password.agilekeychain

    That's an older default location for the sync file. Instead of choosing that specific file, it sounds like you selected the general Dropbox folder. When you do that, 1Password looks for an existing sync file in the new default location, and because it didn't find one there, it created a new one: /Users/lessards/Dropbox/Apps/1Password/1Password.agilekeychain

    Did everything get migrated to the new vault?

    Your vault is stored locally in an SQLite database file on your Mac. When you enable sync with Dropbox, it puts a copy of your vault data into a sync file in your Dropbox folder. 1Password still reads from (and writes to) the same local SQLite file as before, so there wasn't really a migration of your data - it's simply copying changes to/from a different sync file than before. That's not a problem at all as long as both your Mac and iPhone are pointing to the same sync file in Dropbox (and because you updated the sync settings in 1Password on your iPhone, they are).

    Is it safe to delete the old vault?

    If you mean the old .agilekeychain sync file (the one in the top level of your Dropbox folder), then yes, absolutely! Your Mac and iPhone are both pointing to the new sync file in Dropbox now, so you're no longer using the old sync file and can delete it.

    How did 1Password Mac suddenly forget it was syncing with Dropbox?

    I don't know for sure why the sync settings become disabled in 1Password, although there are a few legitimate reasons why that might happen - for example, if you restore 1Password from one of its backup files, or if the sync file in Dropbox is moved to a different location or cannot be found for some reason. Normally, if something causes 1Password to have to disable sync, a notification should appear on your Mac to let you know. You can try checking the Notification Center on your Mac to see if there's a notification about that which you might have missed.

    Hopefully you're all set now, but if you have more questions or need anything else, just let us know. Cheers! :)

This discussion has been closed.