Dropbox syncing to same account, but have different number of items

donnan72
donnan72
Community Member
edited April 2023 in 1Password 7 for Windows

Hi all,

I have 1P6 on my Macbook and 1P on my iphone. Both syncing to the same Dropbox. My Macbook has 484 items and my phone 434.

So it seems as to be syncing to different agilekeychains.....but I can not for the life of me figure out why.

I have unsynced the iphone to dropbox and resynced it about 4 times, to end up with the same 434 items.

When I check both 1P preferences they are logging into the same dropbox.....but the result is different.

I have checked the guidelines in the Dropbox Syncing page, but cant work it out. Any suggestions will be appreciated.


1Password Version: 1P6
Extension Version: 1Pmini
OS Version: 10.12.6
Sync Type: Dropbox
Referrer: forum-search:dropbox

Comments

  • Hi @donnan72,

    Thanks for taking the time to write in. If you look in your Dropbox folder do you see multiple keychain files? I’d recommend running through this guide:

    If you're having trouble syncing with Dropbox

    I hope that helps!

    Ben

  • donnan72
    donnan72
    Community Member

    Hi Ben,

    Thanks for your response.

    There is only one 1Password.agilekeychain folder. Within the subfolder Data: There are many 1223eg.1password files, I presume one for every change that is made and saved?

    If I have only one Dropbox Account and one 1Password.agilekeychain folder, would they not automatically go to the same keychain?

    I have read the guide you recommended, and wondered if I delete my macbook key chain, how do I make sure it refers back to the keychain with the 484 items, and not the lesser one? As I am worried I am going to lose my latest additions.

    Thanks!!!

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    There is only one 1Password.agilekeychain folder. Within the subfolder Data: There are many 1223eg.1password files, I presume one for every change that is made and saved?

    @donnan72: .1password files are individual items you've saved in 1Password, in encrypted form.

    If I have only one Dropbox Account and one 1Password.agilekeychain folder, would they not automatically go to the same keychain?

    Presumably, but we have no insight or control over Dropbox. Definitely check the path on each device, and follow all the steps in this guide to make sure everything is configured correctly:

    If you’re having trouble syncing with Dropbox

    I have read the guide you recommended, and wondered if I delete my macbook key chain, how do I make sure it refers back to the keychain with the 484 items, and not the lesser one? As I am worried I am going to lose my latest additions.

    Please don't delete anything. Follow every step in the guide. That will cover verifying everything in 1Password involving Dropbox. Let me know what you find.

  • hayrun
    hayrun
    Community Member

    I had a similar thing happen from a Dropbox synced vault where I had different number of items on my iOS client and my Windows 1Password 7 Beta Desktop client. I ended up stopping the sync, deleting the vault on the iOS client and re-syncing... this seems to have fixed it.

    The odd thing is it seems to happen more often now. From Desktop, if I delete an item from the vault and verify that the sync process has happened on the iOS client, it often does NOT delete the item on iOS. I deleted several items and this seems to be the case for all of them. Again, if I delete sync and re-sync everything is fine but this shouldn't be normal right?

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    @hayrun: If you were using an AgileKeychain vault before, that will not work in the Windows 1Password 7 beta. Only OPVault is supported there, so it will convert to that format when you import you data into it. You'll need to ensure that you're using the same vault on your other devices, or the data will not be the same between them. Definitely check out the guide above to ensure that there rest of your Dropbox setup is in order as well, and let me know how it goes. :)

  • hayrun
    hayrun
    Community Member

    OPVault for both. i've ran through the troubleshooting steps and still am getting the same inconsistent results. If i change something on the mobile device, i can literally see my dropbox notify me that something was changed and it updated, but it's not reflecting in the 1Password 7 windows beta client.

    I create a few items on the mobile and SOMETIMES they appear... for instance, I create a test identity and it shows up, but i add a test social security and it never appears; some logins make it, while others don't.

    The Dropbox sync appears to be sound since i'm getting the notifications, it's bound to be something with the beta client. It's so inconsistent, that i have to constantly check both sources to ensure that it sync'd properly. i'm attempting to move back to 1Password from Lastpass, but these results are not encouraging.

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    OPVault for both. i've ran through the troubleshooting steps and still am getting the same inconsistent results. If i change something on the mobile device, i can literally see my dropbox notify me that something was changed and it updated, but it's not reflecting in the 1Password 7 windows beta client.

    @hayrun: "OPVault for both", but what is the path to the vault you're using on each device?

    I create a few items on the mobile and SOMETIMES they appear... for instance, I create a test identity and it shows up, but i add a test social security and it never appears; some logins make it, while others don't.

    If you open the OPVault folder in the Dropbox website, do you see "conflicted copy" items there?

    The Dropbox sync appears to be sound since i'm getting the notifications, it's bound to be something with the beta client.

    To be clear, the 1Password "client" doesn't sync the data in this case; Dropbox does. That's why I asked you to follow the guide and let me know what you found. You'll have to excuse my ignorance, as I don't have any of the details of your setup at this point. The OS, 1Password, and device versions involved would be helpful. Please let me know. We can't fix Dropbox issues for you, but we can certainly point you in the right direction with your cooperation. :)

  • hayrun
    hayrun
    Community Member

    I have one OPVault in the root path of Dropbox, and then have another in a folder underneath such as:
    DROPBOX:\MyFirstVault.OPVault and DROPBOX:\MyFolder\MySecondVault.OPVault.

    In the root OPVault (FirstVault), I see nothing about conflicted copy within the OPVault, but in the "SecondVault" that is stored within the folder, I see 3 items that say Conflicted Copy band_NUMBER (DESKTOPNAME's conflicted copy date).

    OS for desktop is Windows 10 April 2018 Update, 1Password Beta 7.0.543. The iOS version is 11.3 running on an iPhone 7 Plus with whatever the latest version is on the App Store.

    Hopefully this helps.

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    I see 3 items that say Conflicted Copy band_NUMBER (DESKTOPNAME's conflicted copy date).

    @hayrun: I'm guessing that's the vault you're having trouble with. Dropbox is creating those copies because of a sync conflict between your devices. 1Password does not use those, only the actual .band files, so you'll only see the data contained in those in your vault in the 1Password app. So Dropbox is successfully syncing data, but you'll want to sort out why there are conflicts. That's not something we can fix for you, but from experience I can tell you the following:

    • You'll probably find that renaming the conflicted copies to be regular .band files helps you find the data you're looking for (you'll want to quit 1Password and backup the other .band files first though).
    • There are a number of causes for Dropbox conflicts, all outside the scope of 1Password, but commonly it's time/date/zone differences between devices and/or changes across multiple devices at once (or when one or more are offline).

    You should be able to sort out the conflicts in this case, and hopefully (with the help of Dropbox support) avoid conflicts in the future. But you may want to consider a 1Password.com membership, since it has seamless sync built in, and we do have the ability to fix issues with that if they arise. You can try it for free for 30 days to take advantage of all of its benefits. Either way, let me know how it turns out!

  • hayrun
    hayrun
    Community Member

    So I've resolved any sort of conflicts, essentially moved the OPVault to it's own directory and re-synced everything and I'm still seeing issues.

    I'm clearly seeing a trend between the Windows beta client and iOS picking it up. So much so, that I installed another 1Password client on a VM with dropbox to ensure that dropbox is indeed syncing as expected and YES, I can see the additional item in the separate standalone Windows beta client.

    So to recap: (All Windows clients are 1Password 7 Beta for Windows clients on Windows 10 April 2018 update)

    • Windows --> Windows VM sync (100% success rate in the several dozens of tests)
    • Windows VM --> Windows (100% success rate in several dozens of tests)
    • Windows --> iOS sync (~30% success rate in the several, several dozens of tests, this is "resolved" by disabling sync on iOS and re-enabling)
    • iOS --> Windows sync (New items 100% success rate, changed records 100% success rate)

    I'm sure the 1Password service sync works just wonderfully, but to me, this clearly indicates that the issue that I'm experiencing is within the software, not the sync service. I should also note that the overwhelmingly majority of the records that fail and "moved" by right-clicking on a vault going to Share -> Vault Name -> Move. Again, I can see why the sync service would be to blame, but I cannot explain why it shows up in my Windows 10 VM ALL of the time and ultimately in my iOS client when I disable/re-enable sync.

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    @hayrun: I don't think I can adequately explain exactly why this is happening, as I just don't have deep insight into Dropbox's systems. However, I can tell you that there's a significant difference between how Dropbox works on the desktop versus mobile devices: the former uses the Dropbox client app, whereas the latter uses Dropbox API calls. They did make some significant changes last year, introducing a new API and shutting down the old one. There have definitely been a few odd issues with that, such as Dropbox reporting no vaults found by the API, though they can be clearly seen in the folder. There seems to be some caching issue or something, as often simply moving the vault out of Dropbox, letting it sync, and then moving it back will allow it to be found. But I'm not sure that doing that (or creating a new vault and copying the data over) would help in your case if you've only recently created the OPVaults.

    I guess the remaining questions I have (that you can answer; I've got others for Dropbox!) are:

    • Do the changes sync eventually if you're patient enough and don't try to force it by disabling and setting it up again?
    • Do you experience the problem when your iOS device is on Wi-Fi, cellular, or both?

    But that's really academic, as we just don't have control over Dropbox. And it is curious to me that I and many others using Dropbox to sync vaults aren't experiencing this issue. It's been almost a year on the new API, and while there have been some glitches, they've been rare and not widespread. Ultimately, you may want to consider a 1Password.com membership, since we do have control over the experience there and, frankly, while we just don't see issues like this, we could fix them if we did. Nevertheless, it's an interesting puzzle. :unamused:

  • hayrun
    hayrun
    Community Member

    They do not. I left my iOS client and Windows client opened for hours. Mind you, my phone locked several times, but each wake-up on the phone, I would bring 1Password to the forefront. I did not see a single change... but yet again, as soon as I disable sync and re-enable sync on iOS, it brings everything back in perfectly. Mind you, I'm literally just disabling and re-enabling sync, NOT deleting the existing vault on iOS.

    Wi-fi, cellular, doesn't matter; same results.

    I wonder how many of the beta users are actually paying attention to it. I just assumed it worked, because it worked on the Windows 1Password 4 client in the past. I only had a fraction of the data I moved over now, but still never had an issue with it. Since I'm moving data so often back and forth between the vaults, it makes me wonder how many people are actually doing something similar while using the beta client.

    Should I bring this topic up in the Windows Beta forums? Perhaps it's something on the beta end of things?

  • As 1Password for iOS is syncing fine with 1Password for Mac I’d say there is a good chance that is the case. I’ll move this thread over there and let our Windows folks know. Thanks!

    Ben

  • Hi @hayrun,

    This looks to me a bug in the iOS version, not Windows. Both my macOS and Windows apps are picking up from each other just fine an quickly but the iOS app did take several minutes before a few shows up there. To narrow it down, can you reproduce the issue in the iOS app and send us the diagnostics report from the iOS device? Please use this guide to generate the 1Password report and email it to us at support+windows@agilebits.com. Also, in the email, include the link to this thread along with your forum username, so that we can connect the email to this thread.

    Let us know here when you've sent it, so we can confirm we got the email.

  • hayrun
    hayrun
    Community Member

    Submitted issue as requested.

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    Thanks! I see that we've received your email, so we can continue the conversation there. We'll take a look at the diagnostics and get back to you shortly! :)

    ref: EWQ-18496-878

This discussion has been closed.