Do I need to keep Dropbox sync turned on if I just bought a 1password.com subscription?

rubysue

I've had 1password since 2011 and been through all of the requisite "new apps," "upgrades" etc. I run into trouble periodically because moving from the one-time license to a subscription etc. is a little clunky.

Recently I couldn't find a chunk of my passwords on one of my two laptops and googled for an answer. I got to this page https://support.1password.com/dropbox-troubleshooting/ that says that Dropbox is unreliable and that I should sign up for an account. Done.

Again, it's all very clunky and disconcerting. I have a new master password that I sign into the website and iOS app, but the master password on the OSX app is still the old one. Soooo...

Now in my 1password OSX app, can I turn off Dropbox sync? Even though it is turned on, I am having conflicts and missing passwords accross devices. If not, why is there even an option to have it turned on if you're using a subscription?

Aaaaand, on top of all that, now all these duplicates!!! https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/comment/413257/#Comment_413257

Is there some way to clean all of this up? Perhaps with a time machine back up? It's seriously a nightmare. I'd rather uninstall everything and rebuild my library from scratch than have hundreds of duplicate and dysfunctional passwords on all my devices.

Lars

@rubysue

I got to this page https://support.1password.com/dropbox-troubleshooting/ that says that Dropbox is unreliable and that I should sign up for an account.

To be clear, that article does not intend to say Dropbox is UNreliable, just that 1password.com is MORE reliable. This has to do with a number of factors, many of which we can't control with Dropbox -- like whether users have updated their version of Dropbox. What permissions they've granted. A whole host of other factors that just aren't present with 1password.com, where we can control both ends of the sync equation, optimized for 1Password data ONLY (we don't have to sync your spreadsheets and photos of your cat, etc -- Dropbox does). But that doesn't mean Dropbox itself is unreliable or that our own implementation of 1Password sync using Dropbox is unreliable either. It just means that Dropbox - and iCloud, and perhaps especially WLAN - are advanced, manual methods of syncing 1Password. They work pretty well when set up correctly and maintained by the user, but none is as simple or user-friendly as our own sync engine at 1password.com.

If you're using your newer Master Password for your 1password.com account everywhere but 1Password for Mac, that says to me that you're still using your Primary vault. The Master Password in 1Password for Mac is set to that of the first vault you create (or sync) when 1Password for Mac is first installed. In your case, that would be your Primary vault. I'd like you to select your Primary vault in the Vault Menu (top left of your main 1Password window). Tell me how many items remain in it. Then, switch to your 1password.com vault (will be labeled Personal or Private), and tell me how many items you have there. Thanks in advance.

rubysue

In my Primary Vault I have 0 items. In my new Personal Vault I have 1,552 items, of which 1,501 items are duplicates.

Lars

@rubysue - OK, now I'm confused: 1,501 are duplicates of what? Each other? The contents of another vault? If you have 0 items in your Primary vault, then that means the "Move" command sounds as if it worked -- your data was moved out of the Primary vault. If you want to be running only your 1password.com account vault(s), then - in 1Password for Mac - please go to Preferences > Accounts and UNcheck the box marked "Allow creation of vaults outside of 1Password accounts". This will remove your Primary vault. Try that, and let us know what the result is.

rubysue

Duplicates of each other. Regardless of how I got here, I now have two of every login.

This means when I am on a site like Google and logging in, I have a menu of 20 logins I have to scroll through to get to the right password.

It is mystifying to me that you wouldn't give a user the ability to remove these.

Ben

The most common reason for seeing duplicates is doing a copy instead of a move action, and then not deleting the Primary vault. This leaves it such that a copy of every item still exists in the Primary vault, but also exists in the Personal vault, and so when viewing All Vaults it appears as if there is a duplicate of each item (because there is). This is generally resolved fairly easily, by deleting the Primary vault. Unfortunately it doesn’t appear this applies to your case, if the Primary vault does indeed have 0 items in it. De-duplicating data is something that is actually fairly difficult to do correctly programmatically, and as the result of doing it wrong is most often data loss... we’ve avoided trying to build such a feature in 1Password. It may be something we offer in the future, but it isn’t on the radar at the moment.

I do apologize for the inconvenience.

Ben

rubysue

Thanks, Ben. This is really disappointing. I'm going to have to clear my vault and start over.

AGAlumB

I'm sorry to hear that. But it's fairly straightforward to delete ("Select All" is your friend) everything in the vault and then re-copy everything over from the original, this time only once. There just isn't any way for 1Password to know which items you want and which you don't; the assumption is that everything you save in your vault is important, so 1Password's job is to keep all of that safe.