Perfect storm of import<->export trouble!

So after having the trial end and not wanting yet another monthly/annual subscription lapping away on my bank account I thought I'd switch back to using the dropbox sync. So to get the latest data that I'd been storing during my free period of using the 1pw account I selected all my items in the 1Password 6 (v6.1) for windows and chose export. That gave me a nice .txt file (the only option available) that seems to be a key=value format where records are delimited by a blank link, all fine and dandy. After signing in to my dropbox vault I removed all the previous passwords in the dropbox vault by selecting them and moving to trash (and without thinking to much emptied it as well, I mean I had the export so I'm thinking I'm safe...).

This however seemed to do nothing so I restarted the app and the passwords were still there. So I reset the 1pw app to a fresh state by removing the data folder in %LOCALAPPDATA%\1Password - as per instructions on a support page. So now it was time to try the import again. I went to Menu>Import but to my disdain the option to import into the dropbox vault was not there. I'm thinking this is a bug so maybe if I update the app (now v6.5) It'd work. Said and done, but alas, the new import dialog didn't seem to provide this alternative.

At this stage I'm starting to get a bit tired of this crap and decide, fine, you're trying to force me into only using the subscription service, you win, I'll just use that. So I signed back into my account after un-freezing it. Here, however it now showed my vault was empty!? Either it was a bug when I tried to clear the dropbox vault or a human error, either way the vault was now empty. Shit, well at last I have the export that I tried to use to fill the dropbox vault. Turns out the new client, only supports import .1pif or .agilekeychain/.opvault!? I checked if perhaps your web imported supported the format but it only seems to except data from other managers or in a CSV format. So here I am, now with a year payed subscription and no passwords... How the hell is it that the data exported to the only available export format in v6.1, is not presently readable
by any of the tools at my disposal only four minor version ticks later!? Please help me, I feel like I've gotten majorly ripped off here! :(

Comments

  • sotai
    sotai
    Community Member

    So after having the trial end and not wanting yet another monthly/annual subscription lapping away on my bank account I thought I'd switch back to using the dropbox sync. So to get the latest data that I'd been storing during my free period of using the 1pw account I selected all my items in the 1Password 6 (v6.1) for windows and chose export. That gave me a nice .txt file (the only option available) that seems to be a key=value format where records are delimited by a blank link, all fine and dandy. After signing in to my dropbox vault I removed all the previous passwords in the dropbox vault by selecting them and moving to trash (and without thinking to much emptied it as well, I mean I had the export so I'm thinking I'm safe...).

    This however seemed to do nothing so I restarted the app and the passwords were still there. So I reset the 1pw app to a fresh state by removing the data folder in %LOCALAPPDATA%\1Password - as per instructions on a support page. So now it was time to try the import again. I went to Menu>Import but to my disdain the option to import into the dropbox vault was not there. I'm thinking this is a bug so maybe if I update the app (now v6.5) It'd work. Said and done, but alas, the new import dialog didn't seem to provide this alternative.

    At this stage I'm starting to get a bit tired of this crap and decide, fine, you're trying to force me into only using the subscription service, you win, I'll just use that. So I signed back into my account after un-freezing it. Here, however it now showed my vault was empty!? Either it was a bug when I tried to clear the dropbox vault or a human error, either way the vault was now empty. Shit, well at last I have the export that I tried to use to fill the dropbox vault. Turns out the new client, only supports import .1pif or .agilekeychain/.opvault!? I checked if perhaps your web imported supported the format but it only seems to except data from other managers or in a CSV format. So here I am, now with a year payed subscription and no passwords... How the hell is it that the data exported to the only available export format in v6.1, is not presently readable
    by any of the tools at my disposal only four minor version ticks later!? Please help me, I feel like I've gotten majorly ripped off here! :(


    1Password Version: 6.1,6.5
    Extension Version: Not Provided
    OS Version: Windows 10
    Sync Type: Account, Dropbox

  • Hi @sotai,

    Thanks for writing in. I'm sorry to hear about the issues you're having and unfortunately, you are correct about the perform storm, this isn't a common issue but we didn't do much to improve this very specific combination of factors. 1Password 6 has not yet been improved to support users that leave the 1Password.com service and come back later.

    You are correct that 1Password 6 for Windows does not currently support importing what it exports. The export formats are designed for importing your data into other programs that are not 1Password, it does not have the 1PIF export format for reimporting into 1Password later. The export formats were added quickly due to requests from users here but we hadn't gone further with 1PIF as we haven't gotten many requests. We had to prioritize other features first but we do plan to add 1PIF export in a future update.

    1Password 6 also does not have support for local vaults (such as the vaults you have in Dropbox), so when you attempted to delete entries for local vaults stored via Dropbox in 1Password 6, it didn't do anything because it cannot do it. We do have a misleading UI bug in this case and we'll remove this option in a future update.

    However, just to be clear, do you still have any local vault in Dropbox, such as .agilekeychain or .opvault?

    Here, however it now showed my vault was empty!? Either it was a bug when I tried to clear the dropbox vault or a human error, either way the vault was now empty.

    Can you sign into 1Password.com web app with Chrome or Firefox on https://my.1Password.com, select your Personal vault and check the trash, is there any data there? It may have been deleted and left in Trash.

  • sotai
    sotai
    Community Member

    Yeah, its empty :( I did an "empty trash" thinking the trash I was emptying was the dropbox one. So I've managed to end up in a situation where the only place I have my passwords is in the previously exported txt file :D

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    @sotai: I am afraid to say this in case it doesn't help, as I don't want to get your hopes up...but 1Password.com has a fairly extensive item history feature. If you login to the 1Password.com web interface and go to the Trash, click View Archived Items at the bottom and see what's there. Fingers crossed.

  • sotai
    sotai
    Community Member

    They're there! :D Now if it just wouldn't be three clicks + 1s wait per item to restore :x Super thanks for this one though!! As a sidenote, is there any docs on the 1pif format? I'm thinking that it would be quite easy to write a little conversion script to convert from the key=val .txt to this format

  • Hi @sotai,

    I don't think we have one, I'll check with our docs team to see if we have one yet.

    I'd like to ping @MrC here because he's our amazing community moderator that's been helping our customers with the custom scripts in Convert to 1Password tool to convert data and he's pretty much the expert on our 1PIF format.

  • MrC
    MrC
    Volunteer Moderator

    @sotai,

    I don't believe Agilebits has a formal 1PIF doc, at least not the last few times I've asked the engineers. The basic 1PIF data structure is trivial enough, but the required data fields, field semantics, internal keywords, legacy and newer category formats, and pitfalls make it non-trivial to document.

    Give up the notion that a CSV to 1PIF script will be trivial to write - it isn't, due to the issues mentioned above, and more. My PIF generation code module alone is over 1000 lines.

    A CSV export --> 1PIF --> 1PIF import will necessarily be a bit lossy, since not all the internal data is exported to the CSV. And I don't know how attachements are treated, as I have spent much time looking at a full 1P6 for Windows CSV export.

    I had considered looking into creating a stop-gap converter from the 1P6 Win CSV export to 1PIF, but a) it seems like this would have a very short lifespan (since Agilebits will produce a 1PIF export eventually), b) have very limited utility, c) be a fair amount of labor to work through each of the category and field mappings, and d) I advised Agilebits 3 years ago to do exactly the type of CSV export that 1P6 for Windows does now, but was rebuffed by one of their technical guys who told me how it wasn't feasible! - so I'm loathe to invest energy into creating this very CSV converter I wanted to create 3 years ago!

    Item (c) above is often the most time consuming aspect of creating a new converter - since it requires looking through each field of each category to create the mapping table (and often data type converter functions - e.g. for dates).

    All that said, I do already have a CSV converter. It supports a few categories, but adding more is just a matter of adding the entries to the category/fields table. It could be modified to 1) support all the record types, 2) handle multiple categories per CSV file. If you are a script guy, and you are interested in getting your hands dirty, I could work with you to do this customization.

  • sotai
    sotai
    Community Member
    edited April 2017

    This is not CSV though? It already very closely resembles something like an array of JSON objects, just in a different notation. Heres an example:

    uuid=rqknkx667bb23nfuujbsgodueq title=accounts.unrealengine.com (epic games) category=001 ainfo=[redacted] scope=Regular autoSubmit=Default website=https://accounts.unrealengine.com/login/index?state=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.unrealengine.com%2Fdashboard&client_id=[redacted] password=[redacted] account=[redacted]

    The format is just several of these separated by a blank line. Also, I'm considering writing this mainly for myself, so lifetime etc is not a problem.

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    @sotai: I'm going to shoot you a private message in a moment. There may be another method worth considering. Please take a look and get back to me.

  • phazeet
    phazeet
    Community Member

    I have this exact same problem. I got sent links to some scripts that should help, but I can't get them to understand that format.
    Did you get this to work?

  • MrC
    MrC
    Volunteer Moderator

    @phazeet - I'm not certain what scripts you might be referring to, but I'm assuming they are mean the converter suite set of conversion scripts.

    Also, I'm not sure what format you are referring to when you say "that format". Can you describe it?

  • phazeet
    phazeet
    Community Member
    edited June 2017

    @MrC It's 1password utilities found at https://support.1password.com/import/#if-you-can-t-use-the-built-in-importers. Specifically a perl script called convert_to_1p4.pl
    It is the exact same format that sotai described on april 20 in this thread.

  • MrC
    MrC
    Volunteer Moderator
    edited June 2017

    There is no converter in the converter suite that handles this format exported by some version of 1Password (it was supposed to be a temporary export solution). Let's see if @brenty has the same solution for you as he suggested above on 4/20.

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    @MrC: Ah, I was afraid that might come up again. I'm not sure I see where this is the same, but the alternative method wouldn't work anyway.

    @phazeet: Can you be ore specific about where you exported the data and where you're ultimately trying to import it? Maybe there's something we can suggest.

  • MrC
    MrC
    Volunteer Moderator

    @brenty,

    I was afraid of that too. So now I will offer to write the converter for this export format if you folks don't anticipate having a 1PIF export very soon, and plan on retaining this export format. Feedback?

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    @phazeet: Yeah, 1PIF export is still stuck behind a number of much higher priority things we're working on. It's definitely on the list, but it doesn't look like something we'll be able to get to in the near-term. That's not good news by an stretch of the imagination, but hopefully that gives you a better sense of the status at least. :(

  • phazeet
    phazeet
    Community Member

    Yeah. That really sucks though. But I understand. This is a really niche issue. But if you can tell me the format of the import file I can probably make something myself. I really want this to get back to normal.

  • dstotijn
    dstotijn
    Community Member

    I too am in a situation where I exported all my items from 1Password 6 on Windows to a plain text file, and cannot import them now. So I definitely "+1" @MrC's offer on adding a converter for this plain txt export format ;)

    Backstory for those interested: changed my master password, forgot it, went to a PC where I recently used the old master password. With internet disconnected, I was able to authenticate on that computer with the old master password and do an export to plain .txt, assuming I would later be able to import again after deleting and creating a new account.

  • MrC
    MrC
    Volunteer Moderator

    @dstotijn ,

    I'll take a look this weekend and see what I can do (free time permitting).

  • dstotijn
    dstotijn
    Community Member

    @MrC, great! In the meantime I quickly put this together: https://github.com/dstotijn/onepasswordtxt2csv. It's a simple Go program that parses a file, maps it to the column names used in your Csv.pm converter and writes the output to a file. It's by no means a complete solution (I just mapped the fields I needed, not from all categories).

    I used this approach (1Password 6 Win -> plain text -> onepasswordtxt2csv -> convert_to_1p4.pl) to get my login items back :)

  • MrC
    MrC
    Volunteer Moderator

    @dstotijn

    That's Great!

    If you don't need the converter any more (and it sounds like you have an acceptable solution), I'll wait until someone else needs it. I like to make sure any solution I provide gets tested in a real-world scenario, so that we can rapidly resolve any issues.

  • phazeet
    phazeet
    Community Member

    @dstotijn

    Thanks! It worked!

    It didn't transfer homepage data, but at least now I have all my passwords back in 1password!
    You are a hero!

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    MrC is indeed a hero. Glad to hear he was able to come to your rescue! :)

This discussion has been closed.