Jump over to 1Password (a.k.a how to abandon Dashlane)
As a super lazy a** and internet junkie, I have been using password manager software for a very long time. First with Lastpass, which easily turns into a serious, long time relationship for $12 a year. It went very well until one of my friends told me about a promotion on Dashlane premium, right when my subscription was about to expire. It was a very good deal by the way, gave me premium access for free for 6 months. Since he was so desperately encouraging me to switch to Dashlane all the time, and more importantly, since I am a notorious cheap bastard who jumps on every free stuff, I decided to suspend my good relationship with Lastpass and transfer to Dashlane.
Bad decision.
Ever since I started using Dashlane I noticed several inconveniences. It seems that compares to Lastpass, Dashlane performs poorly at grabbing the login fields on the page, and half of the time I need to manually copy & paste the login info. This and other small issues always reminds me of the goodies Lastpass used to offer.
Then about a month ago, 1Password announced their new pricing model, and that they will offer 6 months for free for anyone who signs up for this service. And my free trial with Dashlane premium was about to expire, AGAIN. Isn’t that amazing?
I made the jump a couple of days ago, and that’s when all the difficulties emerge. It seems to me that Dashlane deliberately makes the export process cumbersome by messing up the file format it exports. And the limitation from 1Password on the import format makes matter worse, much much worse. So I made this note for myself and anyone who is going through the same process, just to “even the odds”, if you know what I mean. :)
Step 1: Export from Dashlane
Nothing needs noting here. Just go into the Dashlane app and choose File->Export->CSV format. Choosing CSV is vital here, otherwise it won’t be able to be imported by 1Password.
Step 2: Prepare the file
Fire up the mighty Excel, or any other application that can handle CSV file. The key here is to eliminate any unnecessary fields that doesn’t fit 1Password’s tight import rule. A complete guideline can be found here:
According to the discussions on AgileBits’ forum, Dashlane doesn’t do a particularly good job when exporting logins as CSV files. The number of columns it creates for every login entry varies at large, based on how much detail each entry has. And this creates trouble for 1Password since as I mentioned, it’s very strict on the rules. The detail of the discussions for you, if you have the spirit:
Step 3: Convert the file
After you finished polish the CSV file according to the guideline from AgileBits, you would safely assume that 1Password will accept it happily, right? Anyway, I did. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. I tried multiple times feeding the cleaned CSV file to 1Password, and all failed miserably. As it turns out, you have to convert it first to 1Password’s own .1Pif format. Luckily, a great man on the forum has developed a tool that can perform the conversion:
Follow the instruction on the page to download the tool. I was using the Apple Script way, but here’s a small catch: it won’t work when you double click the script. I don’t know if it’s because it was not compatible with my OS (I was using OS X El Capitan) or something else, but I do have to open the script editor and run from there. Once I figure that out, everything went on smoothly.
Step 4: Import into 1Password
Finally! Congratulation on making it to the last step. Now all that’s left is to feed the converted .1Pif into 1Password, and boom! Shakalaka!
Sorry, I mean, here are your passwords, Sir.
P.S. After using 1Password for a couple of days, I am still missing Lastpass. Don’t know what will happen in 6 months, but for now, I think I will return to Lastpass after this trial period.
