1Password woes

1Password is my favorite password keeper/generator, but one of my clients experienced a bug. He regularly uses Safari's private browsing feature, as well as megaproxy.com to log into various sites. He noticed that he was having trouble with the Safari extension for 1password, getting the message: DATA NOT AVAILABLE. We contacted agilebits (the makers of 1Password) and found this out:

The "Data Not Available" error normally happens when the data from 1Password has not been synced to the Safari extension yet. To allow this to happen, please follow these steps:

1. Quit Safari
2. Open the 1Password app, unlock it, then wait 10-20 seconds
3. Reopen Safari and, if need be, unlock the extension

You should be good to go.

Safari's Private Browsing feature can also cause these errors because of a bug that we are working with Apple to resolve. To fix the problem, please disable Private Browsing and reinstall the extension with these instructions:

1. Uninstall the 1Password Safari extension: Go to Safari > Preferences > Extensions, select the 1Password extension, and press the Uninstall button on the right
2. Turn off Private Browsing: Go to the Safari app menu and uncheck Private Browsing
3. Quit Safari:
• On Snow Leopard: choose Safari > Quit or press Command-Q
• On Lion: Hold the Option key and choose Safari > Quit and Close All Windows or press Command-Option-Q
4. Update 1Password: in the 1Password app, go to 1Password > Check for Updates and if a new version is found, please update
5. Reinstall the 1Password extension: go to 1Password > Preferences > Browsers and click the "Install Safari Extension" button. This should automatically launch Safari and you can now go back about your business.

Another client complained that 1Password seems to "forget" her logins. According the agilebits support, this sometimes happens when a site is changed enough for password to have trouble with the autofill function. To fix this:

Website Login Issues

If you have found that one of your Logins that used to work just fine has recently stopped working, here are some things to look out for and a simple way to fix the problem.

How to re-save your Login

If you have a saved Login that is not working, it may need to be re-saved. Often this is because 1Password stores a lot of information about the login form, but if a website owner redesigns the site or changes the form enough, it may mess with 1Password’s ability to fill the form.

To fix the problem, you can re-save your Login with the following steps:

1. First, log out of the site
2. Open 1Password and find the relevant Login
3. Copy the Login’s password to your clipboard, then delete it (don’t worry, 1Password has a trash in case you need to reference or recover this Login)
4. As if you were logging in for the first time, open the site in your browser: type your username, paste your password from the clipboard, and press Return or click the site’s login button
5. 1Password should prompt you to create a new Login. Please do
6. Log out of the site and try to log back in with your fresh new Login.

Even with these issues, I think 1Passoword is a fantastic application that can help you manage an create the many passwords we use to navigate our relationship with the digital universe.

And a few more tips with login issues:

Various things that can cause trouble for 1Password

Some technology used on the web can make it difficult for 1Password to fill in forms. These issues are rare, but they still appear from time to time so we figured we’d try to summarize a couple of them here.

JavaScript Interference

If after creating a new Login the site still does not work, it is possible that the web site is using some JavaScript “tricks” when the login is submitted. Sometimes this code can interfere with the AutoSubmit feature and cause it to fail.

To see if this is the cause, try disabling AutoSubmit (deselect the AutoSubmit checkbox on the 1Password toolbar menu) and logging in again using 1Password. If AutoSubmit was indeed the cause, you can re-enable AutoSubmit and disable it just for this item by editing it in the main 1Password application and changing its AutoSubmit setting to Never.

Adobe Flash

1Password is unable to save and restore Logins for sites that use Adobe Flash. As far as we know, no browser password manager anywhere supports Flash-based sites because Flash is a proprietary solution. At this time, Adobe does not offer interface tools for developers to plug into Flash in the way that 1Password and other form fillers require.

After working with a Flash consultant and reviewing the latest APIs provided by Adobe we found it is still not possible unless websites modify their code to allow it.

Most websites realize the problems with using Flash and provide a standard HTML login page as well. If you cannot find one, the only workaround is to save the username and password in 1Password, then open the 1Password extension when you visit the site, click the right arrow, and copy and paste your password.