This is how I upgraded from my standalone 1Password 6.x family licence to a 1Password 7 cloud subscription on OSX. I am not reviewing 1Password here.

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This is NOT a paid endorsement, this is output from my legitimate quest from upgrading an old stand-alone family licence to a cloud subscription. I have been using 1Password for the past 5 years and have recommended it to everyone I know.

Always backup your data before updating (things can go wrong), good luck. At the time of writing 1Password 7 was not out of beta.

Why

I have a number of guides on moving away from CPanel, Setting up VM’s on UpCloud, AWS, Vultr or Digital Ocean and let’s say 1Password has helped me store everything from service invoices, SSH password service passwords etc. I did have a stroke last year (caused by the flu (a cough) and luckily all is OK ) and I now realise that having everything out of my brain and in a secure vault is a good idea (touch wood).

Reasons why I use 1Password – Password Manager.

• It is a good idea to use a password manager.
• It has allowed me to have a different password on every site I use.
• I managed to stop using my old “same” password on every site I used since the 1990’s.
• I am paranoid (check out https://howsecureismypassword.net/, https://haveibeenpwned.com/ and google “sites hacked” or “passwords exposed”).
• It’s a good idea.

1Password 7 News

1Password 7 has been hitting my twitter timeline, should I upgrade? Here is the official upgrade guide.

Security Researcher Troy Hunt’s – https://haveibeenpwned.com/ is now a feature in 1Password 7

@1Password just keeps getting better and better. Ping: @troyhunt pic.twitter.com/qTtE6XyoXb

— Grant Harrington (@harringg) May 22, 2018

I wrote a PHP implementation to check a password exposure level with Troy Hunt’s pwned passwords API and know it’s a good idea.

Also, there are loads of great features in 1Password 7.

Anything that can help create secure passwords is a good idea.

86% of Passwords are Terrible (and Other Statistics) https://t.co/pSqbb7IV0g by @troyhunt
— Particular Software (@ParticularSW) May 25, 2018

1Password Twitter Support Shoutout

Before I begin I would like to acknowledge the patient 1Password support team on twitter. They answered well over 20 questions from me and handled my frustrations of there not being a clear standalone family licence, I suspected a plot to force people onto a cloud subscription at first.

In an ideal world upgrading, 1Password should be an easy process (1Password Twitter Support indicated)

Load’s of 1 Password activity on Twitter

Phew! ? 1Password 7 for Mac has generated a lot of excitement! If you have any questions, be sure to check out our forums to see if they’ve been answered. Our team is always here. https://t.co/Xixe8e80yY

— 1Password (@1Password) May 23, 2018

Before I downloaded the latest 1Password 7 I fired heaps of questions at the twitter support. I hope 1Password give them a raise or bonus.

I did spend way too long reading past the negative 1Password support posts on “where is the standalone licence”, “beta discounts are gone”, “why so expensive” and “how can I upgrade from 1password 6 and still use dropbox” etc.

I ended up logging a support ticket (looking for the unicorn beta tester discount/stand-alone licence, I think I was too late to join the beta program).

I backed up my 1Password 6 data

Always take backups of your data before upgrading anything.

• Open your existing 1Password 6

• Click File, Export, All Items

• Choose a File Name and press Save

• Verify Data (open Finder)

I also backed up the 1Password file in Dropbox before upgrading. Simply drag it to your desktop.

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I visited https://1password.com/extlink/signin/ and…

1. Signed in (create an account if you don’t have one), I had one from a previous support ticket I logged.
2. I chose “Individual” account type.
3. Specified my Email Address
4. Verified My Email

Then I..

1. Added my Name
2. Skipped the Credit card option (to activate the trial)
3. Generated a master key (this is combined with your password)
4. Created a new password for a new password vault
5. Logged in
6. Saved my Emergency Recover PWF (with details)

I did have a peek at the 1Password SSL certificate strength and other tools and they came up all good (I don’t want to use an insecure service).

You too can test SSL on sites with https://dev.ssllabs.com/ssltest/

The only concern I have is TLS 1.3 is not an option yet. I use it on my blog’s web server (guide here) also a few SSL labs identified weak cyphers are presented as available from the server (Is this an issue)?

I also had a look at Google Chrome’s developer console to see if anything out of the ordinary was popping up? The console appears a little chatty? TLS 1.2 was in force securing the client/server communications so that’s nice.

Now that I am logged into my cloud 1Password (trial) account I can…

1. Add/View/Edit/Delete items in my vault.
2. Download desktop/mobile apps.
3. Import data to vaults.
4. Turn on Two Factor authentication.
5. Create/Edit/Delete a password vault (or set as default).
6. Update billing details (if you wish to subscribe)
7. Contact Support

Now I can connect my new 1Password cloud account to my local 1Password 6 installation by.

1. Open 1 Password (on my Mac)
2. Open the Preferences and go to the Account tab
3. Click on Scan the account details
4. Move the scan window over a QR Code (Setup Code) in a logged in 1password.com screen (login detail like login server, master key and username are auto-entered).
5. Enter my vault password.

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Now I am prompted to import my local 1Password data into the cloud account from my local 1Password.

When the import completed I was prompted to delete the local vault (I said yes because I backed it up).

Tip: 1Password 6 on my Mac did not appear to delete the Dropbox data so I deleted this manually.

After a few minutes, I noticed Dropbox was still syncing files?

Troubleshooting: I had to set my new cloud vault as the primary vault to save to and not the old vault that was syncing via Dropbox. I also deleted all links to Dropbox on iOS and Android devices.

I did notice that 1Password was 6.8.9 (I thought 1password 7 was the latest?, I did try the update button). I ended up ticking “Include beta builds” and then 1Password 7.0 is a download option (maybe this will change in the next few days)?

I opened 1Password 7 on my local desktop.

I had a quick look around in 1Password 7 for the https://haveibeenpwned.com/ feature. I opened an existing account I added to 1Password. It look’s nice.

Some nice alerts and features I noticed when viewing my data in 1 Password 7.

Aside: I had to opt into beta builds on Windows to get 1Password 7 too.

Summary

When I set out and wanted a stand-alone licence but it appears I would need to pay for a licence on Windows and Mac and portable devices.

I overlooked an earlier DM from 1Password (that provided the purchase links) so I decided to go with a subscription (I think I missed the BETA program too, no reply from the hockey app email when opting into beta on Windows).

Buy standalone licences

• Buy Mac Licence ($39 in BETA or $64.99 RRP)
• Buy Windows Licence ($39 in BETA or $64.99 RRP)

From what I could see standalone licences only work via Dropbox (or locally) and not via the 1Password cloud.

However, the subscription does away with the requirement to buy multiple licences (all apps are free once you subscribe). I am not sure when 1Password 8 is coming out so I think it is wiser to go with a yearly subscription (that’s about 10.8c a day in Australian peso’s).

Time to Subscribe

I pulled the trigger and subscribed 🙂

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One nice thing is the trial time is added on to the subscription length so if you have 30 days left in the trial it add’s on to the yearly subscription length (13 months), that’s nice.

Conclusion

Happy = Yes (they are shooting fish in a barrel)

Could have been easier to upgrade from 1 password = Yes

I hope this guide helps someone.

Find out more about 1Password at http://1password.com/

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Revision History

v1.3 Fixed typo in the title/url.

v1.2 Added Links

v1.1 Added Conclusion

v1.0 Initial post