Request/Suggestions for managing Documents ?
I am generally very happy with the Subscription, now called Membership model, except for the handling of Documents.
Before converting to Membership I had been in the habit of saving information as PDFs of emails or web pages, photos of serials on software boxes etc, and including them as an attachment in the 1P item. All info together....great!
With the Membership model the attachments are separated off into separate "Documents". This is not too much of a problem in normal use as a search for the item will find my original item and the associated document. But exporting a manual backup does not export the Documents.
So going forward I will try and avoid attachments which is easy but slow for PDFs, but not possible for photos. I still have 80 legacy documents/attachments to deal with.
Have you any suggestions, best practice ideas for Documents?
Is there a good reason for not supporting attachments in the Membership model? I assume so or you wouldn't have made this backward step. Any chance it is coming in the future?
1Password Version: 6.6.3
Extension Version: 4.6.3
OS Version: 10.12.3
Sync Type: membership
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I'd like to have a folder option for documents... My taxes documents would then be separated by folder by years... Any way to implement this in a late update? :)
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Hey @mikebore,
Glad to hear you've been enjoying 1Password memberships!
You're right, we did have some technical reasons for the new Documents model, but the main reason is that they are much more flexible. With the old model, you'd always have to have them associated to an existing item, but with this model, you can simply upload standalone files if you'd like, without having to associate them to an item. Document items can also have custom fields, so you can even add extra info if you want. However, I understand that in the case that you do want an attachment associated with an item it is not quite ideal. Thanks for your feedback on this!
Regarding local backups, before jumping to that specifically, let me talk a bit about what we do by default. First, we do a lot of things on the server to help recover when needed. We have version control for each item so you can restore previous versions of the item if something ever accidentally happens to it, and we also perform full database backups that we can restore in cases of emergency.
In addition to the server, 1Password for Mac and iOS contain an offline cache of your data, which basically means they have their own local backup of nearly everything on the server. We do this for performance and reliability for when you're offline, but it also serves as a great backup. The only caveat is Documents as they are only downloaded on demand, so you need to make sure you go through those and download each one to make sure that a backup of everything is stored locally.
With these safeguards in place, we feel users who "do nothing" automatically have a very robust backup solution. While it's extremely unlikely anything catastrophic would happen that you couldn't recover from, I understand where you're coming from and I can see why you'd like to manage your own backups in addition to what we do. If making your own local backups will help you sleep better at night, who are we to say no? :)
Creating your own backup is pretty straightforward in 1Password for Mac, however as you've seen documents are not included in 1PIF exports. Currently, you'd have to manually save those files yourself.
We also have some musings on how we could make local backups easier to perform, but at the moment we are focused on making backups on the server as simple as possible. By focusing our efforts there we can make sure that everyone has consistent and rigid backups. The main issue with backups is that they are often manual, which means people might forget to create them, or wait a month between creation, leading to a large discrepancy between the current and previous backup. We want to ensure every item has versions that can be restored if someone changes or removes it by mistake.
I hope that helps, and again, thank you for the feedback!
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Thanks for detailed explanation. Had not considered that the new Documents category could be used for standalone items, not just attachments, and may start to make use of that.
Can I clarify what exactly you mean when you say "The only caveat is Documents as they are only downloaded on demand, so you need to make sure you go through those and download each one to make sure that a backup of everything is stored locally."
The initial view of a Document shows an icon in the window on the RHS, with the option "click to view" under it. Clicking this shows a thumbnail of the Document with the option to "Quick View" which gives a readable normal quickview, but there are also dropdown options to "open with..." and "delete local copy".
Which of these stages causes the file to be downloaded hence in the local cache? Does the fact there is an option to "delete local copy" mean that there is already a downloaded copy?
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Hi @mikebore - You nailed it! If you open a document and "click to view" this will download the document. The document it will remain cached unless you click on the option to "delete local copy". You can also click on the "open with" option to view the document in Preview or use another app to save it outside of 1Password. I hope this helped and let us know if you have any further questions. :+1:
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Sorry to dredge up this thread again. I have just started to eliminate my 80 attachments which became separate documents when I switched to an account. In doing this I realise there is something I am not clear about.
I realise I can create standalone Documents which are not an attachments to anything. I have not done this previously (my docs are all linked attachements).Questions:
Can I put scans or photos or PDFs in a new standalone document?
Is a new standalone Document fully supported by Accounts method?
Does it get exported? (unlike the linked documents which were attachments)
What is the difference between a new standalone document and a Secure Note? when would I use one over the other?Bottom line is how can I save PDFs, scans, photos in 1Password in such a way that they are exported into a local backup?
Thanks
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Can I put scans or photos or PDFs in a new standalone document?
@mikebore: Yep! Documents are just files you've uploaded and stored in your 1Password.com account, so you can do this with any type of file.
Is a new standalone Document fully supported by Accounts method?
Documents are a 1Password.com feature, but I'm not sure I understand what you're asking. Can you elaborate?
Does it get exported? (unlike the linked documents which were attachments)
You can download and save the files you've uploaded as Documents from your account and save them to your computer.
What is the difference between a new standalone document and a Secure Note? when would I use one over the other?
Secure Notes are for storing text notes, often the sorts of things that just aren't a good fit for the other categories. For example, I use Secure Notes to save warranty information. They're useful when you don't want to save a whole file, just actual text. Documents are a good option if you want to save something like a PDF securely so you can retrieve it later.
Bottom line is how can I save PDFs, scans, photos in 1Password in such a way that they are exported into a local backup?
1Password.com has automatic offsite backup, so you can easily access your data even if your computer and local backups fail (or are destroyed in a fire or stolen).
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Thanks for quick reply.
So what I am understanding is standalone Documents are like linked Documents in that a 1P exported backup does not include the actual documents (pdf, jpeg etc). It is necessary to save these separately for local backup.
I accept that the Agilebits server (1Password.com) is an off site backup, which does include the actual pdfs/jpegs etc, so I can fully restore everything from there in event of disaster. But I have this old fashioned feeling that I would like a local backup, preferably in a non proprietary format (i.e. not .pif). Can I save a local backup as .csv or something?
PS
I asked: "Is a new standalone Document fully supported by Accounts method?"
You replied: "Documents are a 1Password.com feature, but I'm not sure I understand what you're asking. Can you elaborate?"What I meant was that before I switched to an Account, I had a lot of info stored in attachments within the one entry for a given item. After I switched these were all split out into 80 separate but linked Documents which are not exported. Meek's first reply in this thread acknowledged that this "less than ideal". This left me with the impression that Documents are not fully supported in the Account model. Which led to my question about standalone Documents compared to linked Documents.
I have been very happy with switching to an Account, except for this one aspect, which seems a backward step compared to the non-account model.
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@mikebore: First off, thanks so much for taking the time to have this conversation with us. It means a lot. :chuffed:
Documents are stored only on the server unless you explicitly download them, as this makes syncing and storage much more efficient — especially on mobile devices.
You can always save those to disk and also export (CSV is available, but 1PIF is better because it is lossless). But this isn't something we recommend doing as all of that would be unencrypted.
And thanks for clarifying! Documents are fully supported, but they're a work in progress as we see a lot of areas we could make them easier to work with. They're nice because you don't have a create individual items to attach files to any longer, and Documents can be linked to from multiple items. But at the same time they can be difficult to work with. So we'd like to do things to keep this flexibility but also take the things that people loved about attachments and build on that as well. Some of this is, as you illustrated, a problem only because you already had a setup you were happy with and this changed things. If you'd started out with Documents in the first place, you'd have organized them accordingly. So Meek was speaking for all of us when he acknowledged that this is an area we want to improve.
One thing that comes up the most I think is a request for bidirectional linking, to make it easy to go from another item to a Document linked in it, and back again with just a couple clicks. Is that something that would help in your case as well? Please let us know the sorts of improvements that would help your workflow. We're listening. :)
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Thanks again.
You said "Documents are stored only on the server unless you explicitly download them"
Not sure what this means. Are you saying that any attachments I have included are not normally stored on the server? Specifically what I would like to confirm is what I said earlier....if my house burns down, I buy a new computer and sign in to 1P to restore my vault, will I get back the attachments in 1P? Before I thought I would, now not sure.
You asked what improvements I would like. The answer is what I had before I switched to an account. i.e I buy a new piece of software. I receive emails from the vendor with serials and activation info etc. I want to add that email as a PDF to the 1P item, and have all pieces of info about that item in one place, and know that I can recover it from 1P servers if necessary. Same thing applies to screenshots.
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You said "Documents are stored only on the server unless you explicitly download them"
Not sure what this means. Are you saying that any attachments I have included are not normally stored on the server?
@mikebore: Sort of. Attachments are a feature of local vaults, and these are never associated with a 1Password.com account and stored on the server.
However, if you mean syncing a local vault through Dropbox or something, the contents of the entire vault are always sync'd. That's why it takes so long to setup 1Password on a new device in those cases. And if you add an attachment on one device it will be downloaded automatically to all the others. There just isn't a way around that, so there has always been a 5MB limit in place for those to keep it from getting out of control.
On the other hand, I've got a few different 1Password.com accounts, and, even though the Setup Code makes it quick and easy to set them up on a new device, all of my vaults are sync'd almost instantaneously after adding an account, before I can even add a second. Since we setup this data format, server infrastructure, and app logic specifically for syncing 1Password data, it's just much more efficient. But since we don't limit the Document file size (it can be as large as you have remaining space in your account), those are not downloaded to all of your devices automatically when you add them to your account.
Specifically what I would like to confirm is what I said earlier....if my house burns down, I buy a new computer and sign in to 1P to restore my vault, will I get back the attachments in 1P? Before I thought I would, now not sure.
Ah, sorry for not being clearer. You said "attachments" but I think you meant "Documents". I'll cover both to be safe:
- An attachment is a file you add to an item in a local vault in the standalone version of 1Password. Local vaults are stored only where you put them, so if you don't have an offsite backup of this and your house burns down with all of your devices in it, it's gone.
- A Document is a file to upload to a vault in your 1Password.com account. Since it's hosted remotely and backed up automatically, all you need to do if your house burns down is sign in to your 1Password.com account on a new device you buy with the insurance money and you've got it all back.
You asked what improvements I would like. The answer is what I had before I switched to an account. i.e I buy a new piece of software. I receive emails from the vendor with serials and activation info etc. I want to add that email as a PDF to the 1P item, and have all pieces of info about that item in one place, and know that I can recover it from 1P servers if necessary. Same thing applies to screenshots.
Got it! An easy way to understand this is by logging into 1Password.com in your browser. Everything you see there is safe, and you can access it from just about anywhere at any time, whether that be Documents, Software license items, or your account details.
Ultimately this is a matter of personal preference. I actually used to hate creating Software License items just so I could attach a PDF of my license information. I often felt like I had to fill out all the fields in the template, even though all of this information was already included in the PDF! Maybe that's a personal failing, but now I just add the PDF as a document, give it a sensible name, and I'm done. But we definitely recognize that not everyone wants to do things this way, so we'll be improving the UI to make Documents work a bit more like attachments in some ways, without sacrificing their flexibility.
I hope this helps. Be sure to let me know if you have any other questions! :)
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Thanks. I think I am getting there.
My PDFs, screenshots, etc started out as being attachments when I had standalone 1Password. When I switched to Account these were converted to separate documents. That is why I was a bit casual about using the terms "attachments" and "documents" interchangeably.
So my documents (that used to be attachments) are stored on the server so would be restored to a new computer, after a fire.
But if I restored from a .pif backup I made by exporting they would not be?
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Thanks. I think I am getting there.
@mikebore: I'm fairly certain that I'm not doing a great job of explaining this, and it's admittedly confusing because it's different than what was established over the previous decade. I appreciate your patience. :)
My PDFs, screenshots, etc started out as being attachments when I had standalone 1Password. When I switched to Account these were converted to separate documents. That is why I was a bit casual about using the terms "attachments" and "documents" interchangeably.
Gotcha. That makes perfect sense. I'm sorry it isn't more intuitive.
So my documents (that used to be attachments) are stored on the server so would be restored to a new computer, after a fire.
Precisely. 1Password.com is a lot of things, but it's fundamentally a safe place to store all of your most important data, not only to protect it for security and privacy reasons, but also for availability and emergencies. 1Password is a lot more than just an app now, and that helps me sleep better at night, both as a user and team member, knowing that anyone using 1Password.com has a backup of their data.
But if I restored from a .pif backup I made by exporting they would not be?
Correct. Documents cannot be exported in an automated fashion currently, since they have to be downloaded individually (otherwise they don't exist on your computer). So you'd need to save the files one at a time to export them.
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Thanks for sticking with me...all is clear now.
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My pleasure! I'm glad to help. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any other questions. We're here for you. :)
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I came to this thread by searching for an explanation for the documents which appeared when I copied a "Membership" item with attachments (health insurance card scans) from an old 1Password vault to a new 1Password.com vault.
Reading the discussion of backups here makes me want to flag a concern that @brenty and I have been exploring in another thread—the risk to personal data in 1Password Families user accounts that is posed by the fact that all such data is destroyed when an account admin deletes a user account.
In the context of that discussion, what I'm learning here—that Documents are not stored locally by default and cannot be backed up via 1PIF export—is quite troubling.
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I have eliminated all my documents and attachments. I have cut and pasted the key info from them into the main fields and deleted the documents.
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@mikebore: That's not a bad idea. I tend to do that "by default" for efficiency (I can more easily deal with text that's stored in a Secure Note than I can that in images or file formats that require a viewer), but you're right that this also makes the data available offline across all devices, as opposed to a Document which must be downloaded first.
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Oh, I always have the data in the 1Password item, but that doesn't obviate the importance of having the attachment. I have often found it quite valuable to have with me, and be able to display, the IMAGE of my drivers license, passport, insurance cards, etc., and those of other close family members. Granted, in most cases the lost image files could be recreated.
Most cases.
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