Tripped up by the latest round of updates, and now I'm in trouble

SaganRitual
SaganRitual
Community Member

I love this app. I've been using it since before Al Gore invented the Internet. One of the things I love about it is that I can use it without knowing anything about how it works, and I can get away with clicking the most obvious-seeming answers on every question it ever asks me. But my luck has run out with this latest update, and now I have two vaults, or perhaps two and a half, in more than one location, and what looks like the Chrome extension keeps telling me to install the Chrome extension--maybe it's lonely? I'm getting two different styles of 1Password interface for the same functionality, depending on whether I use the keyboard or the mouse. One of the interfaces wants my usual password that I think of as my local system password, but the other interface now wants my nuclear-option emergency password, which I've never used for anything on my machine. I don't know what I've done, and I don't even know where to start on a solution.

Is this just your basic noob problem, or have I totally broken something? Do I need to start working on my 1Password PhD?


1Password Version: 7
Extension Version: 1.15.1
OS Version: 10.14.4
Sync Type: Don't know

Comments

  • Hi @SaganRitual

    It's great to hear that until this point 1Password has been so easy to use. Let's see if we can figure out where things got twisted. Did you recently sign up for a 1Password membership? Do you have both 1Password X and the 1Password desktop extension installed in Chrome?

    Please let me know.

    Ben

  • SaganRitual
    SaganRitual
    Community Member
    edited May 2019

    Hi @Ben, I don't think I recently signed up, as I've been using it for years. However, now that you mention it, there was some stuff I had to do not long ago--I think it had something to do with getting all the latest app versions. I suppose it's possible I re-signed-up without knowing it. As far as I know, I've been signed up for many years.

    I have the desktop 1Password 7 Version 7.2.5 (70205002) for Mac, and 1PasswordX 1.15.1 installed in Chrome.

    I've found a clue to the problem, but at this point I'm worried what might happen if I change anything. Here's the clue: I've always used command+\ from Chrome when I go to a page that needs a password. If I was in some app besides Chrome, I'd manually run 1Password.app to get at my passwords. Now, when I hit command+\, it doesn't matter whether I'm in Chrome or not, I get a kind of floating 1Password window that doesn't seem to have an app associated with it. Part of my confusion is that this free-floating window lines up visually with Chrome, and since no separate app shows up in the system menu, I assumed that it was the Chrome extension. But now I think not. I moved my Chrome window, but this floating window does not follow it. I think it's not the Chrome extension, I think it's something else.

    Further, when I use command+\ and get this floating window, the password required turns out to be "X...X", the password I've always used on my laptop and iOS devices, with no concept of there being multiple password vaults. Just one vault, as far as I could tell. And if I want to run the Chrome extension, I have to click the keyhole icon in the Chrome toolbar, which brings up a different window, which requires my other password "Y...Y", which is the nuclear-option password that I created a few months ago, when I did whatever it was that I did to adjust for the newest version. Re-signing-up or something, and creating that nuclear-option thing. Thanks for responding, cheers

  • SaganRitual
    SaganRitual
    Community Member

    Also, in Chrome, on pages that have a username/password entry form, there's a 1Password keyhole attached to the username field. If I click that, it also wants the emergency password, not my usual local system password. Maybe that's a useful clue?

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    @SaganRitual - there is a difference between having used 1Password for years (thank you!) in standalone mode (local data, synced via a 3rd party method like iCloud or Dropbox) and signing up for a 1password.com account. The latter has only been available for just over three years, so if you've been using 1Password for longer than that, then you certainly were using it as a standalone app in the beginning, because that's all there was. My guess is that sometime within the past year, you created a 1password.com account, but you didn't remove your older, standalone Primary vault on one or more of yoru devices. Does that sound like a possibility?

    One of my clues here is that you told us you're using extension version 1.15.1 in Chrome. That would mean you're using 1Password X, which ONLY works with 1Password accounts, not with older standalone vaults. If you have 1Password for Mac installed, click Preferences > Vaults and let me know what you see there. How many vaults are there, and what are their names?

  • SaganRitual
    SaganRitual
    Community Member
    edited May 2019

    @Lars - yes, I think you have it. I think I did just recently create that account, along with that special emergency password. You mentioned Dropbox, which reminds me, a long time ago I did use Dropbox as a place to keep my vault (unsure of the proper term here), but then I worried about Dropbox's security, and I either moved my vault to iCloud, or just to my local machine. I don't recall which, it was some years back.

    And, thank you for making 1Password such a great app that I am still using it after all these years.

    Also, that floating 1Password window always has a box suggesting that I install the Chrome extension, despite my having uninstalled and reinstalled the extension a couple of times. Not sure whether that's a clue

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    @SaganRitual - so, if you think that's the case (or if you're certain it is because you verified it by checking Preferences > Vaults and found one vault called Primary and another called Personal), then the next step would be to look in each vault -- you can switch in the Vault menu, but make sure you look at each one individually, not just the combined All Vaults view), and see what the status of the data in each one is. Is it identical? Completely different? Or is it mostly identical, but with some changes in each one? (hint: you can check for changes by setting the sort order at the top of the item list to Date Modified, which will give you a descending list of items that have been modified/added):

    Let me know what you discover. :)

  • SaganRitual
    SaganRitual
    Community Member

    @Lars My bad, you asked me the question about vault names, and I totally overlooked it until just now, Yes, I have one vault called "Personal", which seems to reside on my laptop, and another vault called "Primary", which lives on iCloud. Somehow, it appears that I've been updating both vaults; as you said, the two are mostly identical, with unique changes in each. It's not terrible; I could update one vault with all the latest and discard the other one easily enough. Unless there's a git-style merge command or something. What do you think?

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    @SaganRitual

    Unless there's a git-style merge command or something.

    There's not. This is going to be a mostly manual process primarily because we never want 1Password making decisions FOR you about which version/copy of an item is the "correct" one. 1Password is therefore very conservative with your data.

    What you should do, since you have the 1password.com account, is plan on that being the final destination of your stuff. Look at the older standalone Primary vault in the way I suggested; set it to Date Modified, and you'll get a sense of when items were changed/added. You can import ones that have been recently added in Primary or modified there into the Personal vault or even simply copy over the changed fields from Primary into the corresponding "duplicate" record in Personal (though it will probably be easier to just delete the older copy of the item from Personal and copy over the newer item from Primary into Personal).

    Once you have what you would consider a complete and up-to-date copy of your data in the Personal vault of your 1password.com account, you can remove the older, unnecessary Primary vault by clicking Preferences > Advanced and un-checking the box marked "Allow creation of vaults outside 1Password accounts." That will remove it.

    One caution - and it's a big one: up to now, because you've had a Primary vault, your 1Password for Mac app has used whatever Master Password was associated with that older Primary vault. When you created your 1password.com account, you would've been asked to create a Master Password for that as well -- which could have been but didn't necessarily have to be the same as your existing Primary vault's Master Password. When you remove Primary, your 1Password for Mac app will require you to use the Master Password you created for the 1password.com account (because that'll be the only vault you have left in the app). Therefore, make sure you know this Master Password. If you can sign into your 1password.com account successfully in a browser at start.1password.com then you're fine, no worries. But I would hate to see you remove the Primary vault only to discover you don't remember and didn't write down the Master Password for your 1password.com account.

  • SaganRitual
    SaganRitual
    Community Member

    @Lars Excellent, thanks so much for your advice, and the warnings to be careful. I'm usually not careful with this app, as this is the only time I've had trouble with it in many years.

    Do you have any thoughts on that one floating window that always tells me to install the Chrome extension? The first pic below shows the window that tells me to install it, although I've tried install/reinstall a few times. The second pic below is Chrome with the extension activated (I think?). In the upper right, you can see that the extension is there, and in my Chrome settings, the extension is enabled. Any thoughts on that one? Thanks for your help! I'm getting started right now. Cheers


  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    @SaganRitual - well, you're using 1Password X -- the prompt to install the 1Password extension is from the 1Password app, which requires the older 1Password extension you're used to. If you visit our page at the Chrome Web Store, you'll see three extensions. 1Password X, the beta of 1Password X, and the older ("desktop app required") version. That's the one you're being prompted to install. If you like you can install it, then visit chrome://extensions and disable 1Password X. That should prevent the pop-up and give you the older mini you're more familiar with.

  • SaganRitual
    SaganRitual
    Community Member

    @Lars Thanks much. I'm still a bit confused. What if I wanted to keep up with the times and use the latest and greatest of everything? I actually took the time to look for doc on how to use 1Password (rare for me!); it seems that perhaps I should uninstall 1Password7 (the desktop app) and just keep the X Chrome extension? That seems to be what the downloads page is saying. I don't necessarily need everything to run like it did before, if I can just figure out which app I should be running and how I should be accessing it.

  • @SaganRitual

    You can safely ignore the prompt to install the "traditional" extension and keep using 1Password X as you have been recently. We're working on integrating 1Password X with 1Password for Mac such that you won't get this prompt anymore, but we're not quite there yet. :)

    I wouldn't necessarily recommend ditching 1Password for Mac, though you could. In my mind it adds value. :+1:

    Ben

This discussion has been closed.