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Apologies, we discovered a very crazy bug in Mavericks (where it refuses to accept changes to preference values) that held up the guide. It will be posted tomorrow evening.

The folder is on a flash drive, which now has a sparsebundle file

Note that you can also simply drag that sparsebundle onto Espionage 3's window. :)

If, however, after unlocking it, the folder becomes invisible, then you'll need to use a utility like our free Cloak software (related blog post).

Dear David,

I've recently upgraded to Mavericks and Espionage 3. I uninstalled Espionage 2 but now am at a loss as to how to restore my encrypted folder in E3. The folder is on a flash drive, which now has a sparsebundle file--the result, I assume, of the uninstall process?

If Espionage 2 failed to restore the folder it will have left you the disk image. You can follow these instructions to copy the files out of it:

http://www.taoeffect.com/espionage/EspionageHelp/pages/trbl-restoring.html

I also have a backup and could restore from that, but again, there aren't any instructions on how to do this.

They're in Espionage 2's help, also online here:

https://www.taoeffect.com/espionage/EspionageHelp/pages/usg-restore_timemachine.html

If any of that doesn't help let me know!

Dear Dave,

Just figured it out.

Glad to hear you got it working!

We're preparing an official guide right now, and more info about what happened in your case would help us help others. Could you help us out? We'd like to post it tomorrow. :)

When you said, "I don't see any window", does that mean that after killing EspionageHelper and then opening Espionage it would not show the main window (with the black password prompt)?

I had an alias to a file inside the encrypted folder.  After killing the EspionageHelper app (which was much harder than your guide said, because launchd had it set to "keep alive" status.  I found the launchd plist and deleted that, then I could kill it), I clicked the alias, and then Finder asked me for my password for the sparseimage.  Voilá: my data!

Wow, so am I understanding correctly, you had an alias to a file (inside of the encrypted folder), outside of the encrypted folder? Then after stopping the helper (via a method that we don't expect most users to follow), you double-clicked on the alias file and were prompted to enter the password for the disk image? Am I correctly understanding up to this point?

If so, what happened next? I'm guessing that the disk image mounted, and the file opened? Did you see the encrypted volume on your Desktop, and if not, did you use something like iVisible to make it visible? Were you able to get to your other files?

Greg,

I somehow missed that files had to be removed from Version 2.   I followed your instructions to reinstall Version 2, uninstall it, and then move the file files to Version 3.   It worked perfectly!

Many thanks!

Glad all's working fine now! :)

Hey tylerstringer, have a look at my reply here: https://www.taoeffect.com/forum/index.php?topic=2721.msg5842#msg5842

Dear Beleriand and tylerstringer,

Hi, I upgraded to Espionage 3, but am having a problem moving my files into the application.  According to your FAQ, I have to remove the files from Espionage 2.  If that means only unlock them, I've done that, but still cannot drag them into v.3.  If it means something else, I just get a chime when I try to open V.2.

To go from 2 -> 3 you need to remove the folders from Espionage 2, and by that we mean restore/decrypt them. The best way to do that is to uninstall Espionage 2 using its built-in uninstall (choose "Uninstall Espionage..." from the Espionage menu). You can also manually remove them by selecting them and pressing the delete key, or clicking on the minus button in the lower left corner of the main window.

Did you do that?

If you did something else, that's probably the cause of the trouble, and yes, the best thing would be to re-install Espionage 2, which you can get here:

https://www.taoeffect.com/espionage/download/Espionage.dmg

If you have Espionage 3 installed and running, then you'll need to quit Espionage 3 before opening Espionage 2 (otherwise Espionage 2 will refuse to open). You can reopen version 3 after you're done restoring the folders.

If you're still running into problems after trying all of that, please post or link to some screenshots to of the folders in the Finder to give us a better idea of what's going on. You can also email them to us: support at taoeffect dot com.

the 2nd one was a normal folder called "Work".. after a relatively long time to "restore it".. boom! I got a message that i'm out of space! and then some Espionage help page showed up asking me to download "iVisible"..and a file named ""Work.sparsebundle" showed up next to the original one! and suddenly my extra 100 free gigs space on my hard disk is gone! when i click on "Work.sparsebundle", it asks to type in the password, and then it has the same files of my "Work" folder plus several other hidden ones.. What shall I do now?!!!!

There's no major problem here, Espionage behaved correctly when your hard drive ran out of space, and it sounds like your files are safe.

Normally, before decrypting a folder, Espionage should warn you if you don't have enough space to do so, but sometimes it does not estimate the remaining hard disk space correctly and goes ahead anyway. Or, it warned you, and you decrypted anyway. Either way, while restoring the folder, your computer ran out of room for the decrypted files, so Espionage failed to restore all of them (it probably restored most, however).

Now, where you had the encrypted folder, is a partially restored "Work" folder. It probably doesn't have all of the files that were in the encrypted folder.

After Espionage failed to completely restore the folder, it gave you the encrypted disk image: "Work.sparsebundle". It also brought up the help documentation on what to do next. Simply read that document and follow the advice there to manually copy your files out of the mounted disk image to some place on your computer. You will need to make sure you have room on your hard drive to do this. I recommend moving the partially-restored "Work" folder onto an external drive and then deleting it from your Mac to clear up some room. Once you've verified that you've copied all of your files out of the invisible volume called "Work" (as described in the help) you can delete it from the external drive.

If you're confused about anything in the help, just ask us! :)

Finally, i have encrypted iPhoto as well!

When you encrypt a folder, Espionage duplicates its contents (encrypted), so how did you encrypt iPhoto if you had no hard drive space? Did you delete some files before encrypting it?

Would I have the same issues again?!!!!!

If you try to decrypt/restore a folder and you don't have enough hard drive space to do so, then yes, you will have the same problem. Just make sure that you have at least as much space on your drive as the size of the folder before removing it from Espionage.

Thanks for the post m661!

To the developers next time you might want to check if your program works as intended with a gold master copy as warning people almost a entire day after the release of a upgrade is a really bad call.

You're absolutely right, we failed big time on this one, and there is no acceptable excuse for that. My apologies!

Also, if you haven't already read the Time Machine restore instructions, please do so:

https://www.taoeffect.com/espionage/EspionageHelp/pages/usg-restore_timemachine.html

Hi webgogo, we've just setup a thread for this purpose:

https://www.taoeffect.com/forum/index.php?topic=2717.0

Please follow the instructions there to upgrade your license.

[NOTE: If you have a version 2.x license, do not use this form! Please visit this blog post instead.]

NOTE: If you have a version 2.x license, do not use this form! Please visit this blog post instead.

If you'd like to change your 3.x license after purchase, you can do so fairly simply by filling out and submitting the form below:

Modify existing 3.x License to include:

Lifetime Upgrades $19.99 USDFamily Pack (5 Users) $34.99 USDFamily Pack (5 Users) with Lifetime Upgrades $54.98 USD

Name on 3.x License: (exact spelling)

Email on 3.x License: (exact spelling)

If all went well with your purchase you should receive your new license within 10 minutes, and if you don't please check your spam folder. If after 30 minutes there is still no sign of your license, please email our support team.

Once we receive payment we'll check our database to make sure the information is correct and then send you an updated license.

Two ways to replace your old license:

Downloading the license file that you receive and double-click it.

Or, if you are scared to double-click on email attachments (and you should be), then there is the manual way:

• Quit Espionage
• Open the Finder and choose "Go to Folder..." from the Go menu.
• Copy and paste the text below and press the Go button:
  

  ~/Library/Application Support/com.taoeffect.Espionage3/

  
  
  
• Move this file to the trash: license

Now open Espionage and register using your new license as before (the email the license file is sent in will contain exact instructions if you forgot how).

[if you choose to use an old version of Espionage 2 you are on your own (even now).]

Were you thinking of this blog post?

https://www.taoeffect.com/blog/2010/08/espionage-2-8-3-released/

I don't think I ever released a version of Espionage 2 that was compatible with Tiger (though it does sound like I tried).

You can try some of the older releases by guessing the URL. For example, here is 2.5.4:

http://www.taoeffect.com/espionage/releases/Espionage2.5.4.dmg

Please note, however, that if you choose to use an old version of Espionage 2 you are on your own (even now). We cannot recommend or support these old versions because they have known bugs that were fixed in later versions. The first question we ask when someone runs into a problem with Espionage is: "Are you using the latest version of Espionage?" If not, we ask that they upgrade to the latest version first, and then troubleshoot any problems that persist.

You may also need to re-download Espionage, it's possible something either got corrupted to deleted. Here's the link to the latest version of version 2:

https://www.taoeffect.com/espionage/download/Espionage.dmg

It might be helpful to note that if you had Espionage 2 installed, there is an Espionage folder in the library as well. This also needs to be renamed/removed to start from scratch.

I think there might have been a bug related to that with the initial release of version 3, but I think the latest version should work fine if the old folder is there. Of course to make sure to avoid any issues we do recommend first uninstalling the old version with its built-in uninstaller, and then running the new one.