Dear Brendan,
I am disappointed to be reading these posts about lack of data encryption on Cloudant. As an encryption layperson using this App, I thought my data were encrypted as they were in previous TapForms versions. Now that my data are on a server unencrypted, I get the impression from articles on encryption that the data can never be erased and will always exist in some form in an unencrypted format.
As for users who lose their passkey, I know Apple, Microsoft, etc. will not help me recover a passkey if I forget it and I knowingly password protected my files. Previous versions of TapForms gave me the impression that nobody would help me recover my passkey or my data.
I am extremely disappointed this has occurred with the new TapForms and that it was not communicated more clearly as the switch was made to Cloudant.
Please consider making the use of encryption a top priority for your users who may be misinformed and/or in need of this feature.
Cloudant told me they were going to be doing something in that area, but I haven’t heard back from them since I asked them about it. I wrote some code to encrypt and decrypt the data as it’s synced, but I never enabled it. There were potential problems with it that could have resulted in loss of data in Cloudant and I didn’t want to take the chance. Things could go wrong. One thing could be if you changed the encryption key or if you decided to turn off encryption then you could have a situation where some data was encrypted with one key and some with another key or the data could be unrecoverable if you forgot the key (which does happen quite often). But maybe I’ll have to revisit it soon. For now maybe stick with Nearby sync for those documents which contain your sensitive data.
Did you have a power failure at all? I’m working with the Couchbase Lite developers to try and find a resolution to this problem. If you sync with Cloudant you’re safer in this respect because as you make changes, they’re automatically synced to the cloud and your most recent updates are more easily recoverable. I’m very sorry for this problem.
Just bought Tap Forms. Am really happy at how easy it is to create a custom form. But I goofed up by opening the Sample Forms document, creating my first custom form there, and creating a bunch of records. I would like to be able to keep the Sample Forms Document separate from my custom forms document.
So I’ve been searching for a way to duplicate my dual document and then remove all the sample forms from one copy and my custom form and records from the other copy. Can’t find a way to duplicate or “save as” a document to achieve this.
How can I recover from my initial mistake?
Just FYI that I worked with the dev via email and, strangely enough, my data was still there on his version but not mine.
He sent me back a TF archive and I was able to recover my data.
Please everyone: backup your data! Shame on me…
Can I just say how cool it is that I had multiple responses, the first only minutes after sending my initial email
I had a few databases open and then went to the main TP5 screen and created folders and moved the databases around.
Now when I closed/reopened those databases they are blank! No forms no records, nothing.
I didn’t have backups turned on for these two databases…any chance of recovery??
Hi Brendan,
I also had the same problem.
Here is what I did to recover data:
1 Library / Containers / com.tapzapp.tapforms-mac / Data / Documents / Backups
take the file from the last backup and decompress it.
2 move it in the Documents folder to replace the corrupted file.
3 open TF normally this latest version should open
Recovery is possible if you have a recent backup version.
Since I am cautious before leaving TF also I do a backup (File / Save) and then after I leave TF and I let it do its own backup, I wait without doing anything, the progress is visible and take enough time long.
Jacques
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Hi Brendan,
Perfect, I could recover a backup by unzipping an older backup file.
I was confused on how to use the zip file because during the migration process from TF 3, a zip TF file is issued without unzipping. Also on TF 3 could not we use unzipped file to import ?
Thanks a lot for your quick help,
Kind regards,
Laurent
Hello Brendan,
I have upgraded to versions 5.
On the Mac the auto backup, when closing the app., sometimes generates 2 files, one of a large size and one of a small size (i.e. Example.tapforms-2016-08-27T11-18-18 of 17,9 Mo and Example.tapforms-2016-08-27T11-18-22 of 490 Ko), sometimes the backup only generates one file of a large size (which was the normal behavior in TapForms V3).
Would you please to share your input and how to handle this small size files in the case I need to recover the DB through my backups?
Thanks a lot in advance,
Kind regards,
Laurent
Yikes. I just spent hours recovering lost databases, so hopefully this helps someone else…
I wanted to split my version 4 database into 2 separate version 5 database files. After importing my version 4 file, I clicked on the “right-arrow-in-a-circle” icon from the documents window and it took me to the actual database file. I duplicated that file and renamed the copy. The new file appeared in the documents window and I then happily went into each file and deleted the appropriate records so that I was left with two separate clean databases. All seemed great…
DO NOT DO THIS!!!
The problem is that both files retain the same database ID. So when you set up syncing with Cloudant, it thinks they are the same database, e.g. both local databases sync to the same Cloudant database. So once I synced the second database, it deleted all of the 1st database’s records (since I HAD deleted those records from the 2nd database), and then the first database deleted all the records from the 2nd database. So now both local databases have ZERO records in them. They wiped each other out!
After manually deleting both database files, both from Cloudant and Tap Forms, I realized I needed to separately MIGRATE the original file twice, and then go through the whole thing again.
This actually still wasn’t exactly right. Cloudant sees all the deletes. One of the two databases has about 10x more records than the other. So the 2nd database throws alerts in Cloudant since it has way more deleted records than actual records. It works, but the alerts were bothering me. So for the smaller database, I ended up going through a painful export at the record level and then importing into a fresh clean database. Which then happily synced to Cloudant.
What a pain. At least it is all working now. Suggestion — don’t allow multiple files to have the same ID.
Side note from the User Experience icon police… The “right-arrow-in-a-circle” icon on the database documents window (mentioned above) behaves the same way it does in version 4. It takes you to the actual file in the Finder. But within a record, the same icon is used, but with a different action. Since media/files are embedded in the database now, that same icon is used to mean EXPORT (e.g. save the attachment). One icon… Two behaviors…
Thanks, Brendan, for your speedy response during this busy time of deploying new software.
Yes, I can recover the TF5 data file using Time Machine.
Likewise, I can copy the TF5 data file from /Users/[username]/Library/Containers/com.tapzapp.tapforms-mac/Data/Documents and transfer the TF5 data file to my second machine. Now that it is a single file, it is easy to do and not miss copying anything.
Thank you.
Peter
Hi Peter,
One other unfortunately case that can cause this if you had never set an encryption key is that the database file has become corrupted somehow.
Do you have a recent backup file you can restore to?
Or do you have Time Machine installed and running? If so, then it’s easy to recover the database file to a previous version.
Tap Forms stores its database file in the following folder:
~/Library/Containers/com.tapforms.mac/Data/Documents
The database file is called TapForms_db.sqlite. You’ll want to navigate to the above folder, then click on the TapForms_db.sqlite file and then use the Enter Time Machine command from the menu bar. Then scroll back through time and restore a previous version of the file.
Make sure Tap Forms is not running at the time you do this. Then re-launch Tap Forms and hopefully you’ll be able to get in. If not, go back a little further in time.
I’m very sorry this happened.
Thanks,
Brendan
hi,
I cannot open my tap forms anymore, “encryption key required” (however, i can’t remember ever setting the encryption key)
I read in the forum that i can recover the key using the keychain app on my mac, but tap forms is not it (??)
do you have other suggestions how i can recover my database ?
thx
Peter
No Brandon, i realised, I did not! I just started playing with your app a week ago! Certain enthusiasm covered my eyes and made me manage only with that dropbox backup. I’ll be wiser after the damage (of course), but is there any way to recover anything form the “*.tfs”, “*.tfx” files?
I just purchased Tap Forms a few days ago after using it in trial mode for several days. Today when starting up it asked for an Encryption Key. I thought that was the license key and used that. It would not unlock. Then I realized maybe it was an actual encryption key that it wanted. That is highly unusual since I never set encryption on the application.
So is all my data lost? I have most of my data from before I converted from Bento, but all the work since is that lost?
How do I recover from this?
If this happened to me now, will this happen again in the future? If so I am questioning my purchase.
