how to convert purchase date=1542369660

I exported from 1PW V7 and the date looks like purchase date=1542369660. What is easiest way to find out the real date?


1Password Version: 7
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: Win 10
Sync Type: Dropbox
Referrer: forum-search:how to convert purchase date=1542369660

Comments

  • MrC
    MrC
    Volunteer Moderator
    edited November 2018

    @MikeV99

    These are Unix Epoch timestamp values. Here is a converter.

    https://www.epochconverter.com/

    Note this will be approximate, due to time zones, DST, etc. and you may have to adjust the resulting date/time.

  • MikeV99
    MikeV99
    Community Member

    Thank you. Not sure why 1Password can't export human readable dates.

  • @MikeV99 exports are designed for machine to understand, not humans. Their purpose is to move from one password manager to another, so it isn't important that we can read them but moreso that the machine you're importing into can. Computers don't exactly speak English, so we export something they should be able to understand regardless of who built them to ensure your import elsewhere is as accurate as possible. If you need something readable by a human, of course you can find that right in your 1Password app. :chuffed:

  • MikeV99
    MikeV99
    Community Member

    Then why is the export to a text file which is intended for a human to read?

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    @MikeV99: Because it exports the actual data saved in the item. I think that's reasonable. A better question is "why are Unix epoch time stamps used by computers?" And the answer is that it provides a baseline frame of reference. If the time/date is saved according to your local time/date/zone, and then you move somewhere else (or travel), it will then be wrong, as far as you're concerned. 12:00 February 29th 2016 is a different month in another part of the world. This is just one example, from a bug we had in 1Password a few years ago:

    1Password, time zones, and you

    And you can find many, many more examples from other software on the internet.

    Also, exported data is intended to be imported into other software, not printed and read off of sheets of paper. It's technically "human readable", but accuracy is more important when dealing with people's data. What goes in should be what comes out. There are much bigger problems than not understanding Unix time that result from doing otherwise.

  • MikeV99
    MikeV99
    Community Member

    I have no problem with machine readable code in files formatted for machine input. I needed human readable text in my text file and not machine code that I had to hassle with to use the text file. If 1PW is going to export to a text file then it should not be too much to expect that the data be in a human readable format. What, maybe 15 lines of code to convert it before exporting?

  • MrC
    MrC
    Volunteer Moderator
    edited November 2018

    Hi @MikeV99,

    The preferred format to export 1Password data is 1PIF - it is the most robust format. That said, 1PIF export isn't implemented yet in 1Password 7 for Windows, so you're stuck with CSV.

    I don't think the CSV export was ever meant to be as robust or fully featured as the 1PIF, and I think it was a stop-gap measure until Agilebits got the 1PIF export code done. And localized, internationalized date formatting is non-trivial, so they may not have had the code available to do that. So, for now, you're presented with the Unix Epoch time stamps that are used internally by the core code.

    May I ask - what is it that you are ultimately trying to accomplish?

  • MikeV99
    MikeV99
    Community Member

    I wanted text format to be able to compare entries from a new Win 10 machine that was having Dropbox sync problems with the Dropbox entries from my other computers. I fixed the Win 10 and was having to manually check about 10 items. No big deal, just a simple .txt file to get things back in sync.

  • MrC
    MrC
    Volunteer Moderator
    edited November 2018

    @MikeV99 ,

    Gotcha.

    The best way to do that would be to import them into a spreadsheet program, sort them uniquely, save them, and use a comparison program to check the diffs. This way, you don't have to worry about the raw date values.

    I'm not sure if Excel can compare two files like this (haven't used it in years now). If not, on Windows, Beyond Compare is a nice program with a trial license) for doing this. On macOS, this is all rather trivial with the command line.

    Best of luck!

  • MikeV99
    MikeV99
    Community Member

    Nah, too much trouble. I just opened the item in 1PW after fixing the sync problem on my Win 10 and opened the exported .txt file (dumped before I did a clean uninstall and install of 1PW) in Notepad on my Win 10 system and checked the fields I needed to verify. Unfortunately, Date purchased was one of those fields. This thread has taken way too much time ... Thank you for your help, but let's close the topic.

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    I hear you. It's just not a use case (visual comparison for manual sync conflict resolution) that we design for. Our priority has to be maintaining the integrity of user data during export so it can be imported somewhere else. Anyway, I can't help but think there's a better way to resolve sync issues, but I'm glad you were able to find a workaround that helped for your purposes.

This discussion has been closed.