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14.5 and problem with photos

Hi, I can not open secure after updating iPhone to 14.5. I downloaded the new app msecure and migrated my data. The problem is that all photos in the old version can not be open in this version!! What can I do??
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Hi Roberta,

Thank you for contacting us, and I'm sorry for the issue you are experiencing. I'm not sure what could be happening here. I just tested the migration of data from mSecure 4.5 to mSecure 5 with both attachments and customer icons, and everything worked as it was supposed to. After the migration, all of the attachments and custom icons are displayed in the app, and when I tap on the attachments, the larger image is displayed.


The only thing I can think of to try is to have you reset your mSecure 5 account, so you can try to migrate your data again. The other option would be to try to restore from a recent email backup you may have access to. Do you have an email backup you can restore from? If not, do you still have mSecure 4 installed on your phone, and do you want to try resetting the account to migrate the data again?

Same issue experienced after upgrade today to mSecure 5 from a version 4 that was not compatible with recent iOS update. Updated iOS earlier, then existing mSecure 4 not able to open, then download mSecure 5, then run 5 and created account and migrated old data without any apparent issues, open peruse new mSecure 5 and all recent field data is present however only “placeholders” where photos would normally be present in each record are showing (dotted outline icons), and also appears to be only placeholder icons in main list where custom icons were previously present. To be noted is that the missing photo “placeholders” appear to all be in the correct quantity within the appropriate records.
Further to be noted… The previous mSecure 4 version (still residing on iPhone but unable to open) is unknown, although the app icon is the square lighter blue version compared to the darker mSecure 5 icon. More importantly, I believe I had been syncing with iCloud previously and having just checked the iPhone settings for iCloud, both mSecure versions are present in the list (light and dark blue icons) and both are toggled on. Also, opening the mSecure 5, perusing settings and initiating an email backup, a draft email is created containing the backup file attachment of only approximately 325kb, when previous backup attachments where typically around 50mb (I cancelled this email backup and did not complete to be safe at the point).
As mentioned above, I believe I had my previous mSecure 4 version syncing with iCloud (not positive tho), however when staring the new mSecure 5 and migrating my data, I had chosen to sync using your mSecure Cloud (as you recommend), perhaps re-syncing with iCloud or removing/re-installing mSecure 5 and selecting iCloud initially would get my critical photo attachments back?!? Note that my old mSecure will not open on current iOS (14.6) and I cannot risk losing the current data that did sync fine.
One final note, the photo “placeholders”, when clicked, will open a photo display screen without any error indicated and has an “X” button and a “share” button at the top that both seem to work properly, it’s just that nothing at all is showing for the picture except an all black screen.

Hi Steve,

I'm sorry for the issue you are experiencing here with the photo attachments. Every now and again, we run into a customer experiencing this, but we have not been able to figure out what's causing it to happen. When upgrading from v4 to v5, all of the photo attachments are available locally, so there shouldn't be any problems getting them imported into the new app. Unfortunately, reinstalling and selecting iCloud syncing won't help the situation, because v5 places it's data synced to icloud in a different folder than v4 did. The best solution would be to try restoring from a backup file, but I'm not sure that's possible here. Do you know if you a recent email backup that would have been made in mSecure 4?


If you don't have a backup file, I have something I want to try, but it's not something I have done before. It's possible that all that's missing in the new sync location is the encrypted photos, so we may be able to fix this by copying the old "attachments" folder to the new location. We'll try that if you don't have a backup to restore from.

Thanks Mike, I could try your “try something” as long as it would not corrupt or lose the existing data that migrated successfully already. Another note is that I have only been using mSecure on my iPhone and do not have any other copy running on my MacBook etc. Also, I have checked for the most recent backup, which is from about 10 months ago. I had emailed a fresh backup to myself just this past April 15th however the file size being approx 55mb forced it to be sent using iCloud’s Mail Drop link, which unfortunately expired May 15th as I had been extremely busy for some time and hadn’t downloaded it locally to my MacBook like usual. Another consideration crossed my mind regarding my iPhone capacity and it’s function of offloading infrequently accessed photos/files/apps to iCloud until trying to access them again, which then upload back to iPhone. My capacity is 64gb, however I’d always had a couple gigs free at any given time. I continuously use/access my mSecure app, and occasionally access various photos. Would these mSecure 4 photo files have been local at the time of migrating to mSecure 5 or possibly only in iCloud, or would there be any affect in this regard?
Regarding your proposal… being that the photo files are encrypted (presumably with the v4 password), would it be suitable to change my v5 password temporarily to match the old v4 before relocating the encrypted files?

Hi Steve,

I wasn't thinking about phone and icloud available space, that could be what's causing this issue. This happens so infrequently, that's it's hard to keep a good trail of info as to what might be causing it, but that infrequency might actually be the clue leading to it being about a lack of space on either the device, iCloud Drive or both. Even though their can be what seems to be more than enough space to store data, when it gets low enough, all sorts of problems can take place due to the need for memory swapping. At this time, I'm not sure this is the cause, but it seems reasonable.


I just realized that my idea from before won't work as I had thought. In mSecure 5, there is a very secure key called an "Account Key" that is actually responsible for encrypting your data. Even though you might be using the same password in mSecure 5 as you were in v4, the Account Key in v5 won't match the password you were using in v4, so even if mSecure wanted to bring in the photos from iCloud, they wouldn't be able to be decrypted.


However, I have a different idea. Now that you have your data in mSecure 5, without the attachments of course, we can try to see if reinstalling mSecure 4 is possible. If it is, then we can try to sync in the data from your iCloud account. For some, reinstalling the older version does work, so this is worth a try. We never try this without the data already migrated to mSecure 5, because it will delete the v4 data stored locally on the device, and it's possible the remote sync password will not be known for syncing in the data from your iCloud account. With the state you're in now, I don't think trying this would hurt, because if you don't try it, the photos won't be available in mSecure 5 anyhow.


I hope that all makes sense, but if not, please let me know before proceed. I'll wait to hear back from you, and then I'll send instructions for reinstalling mSecure 4 if that's the route you want to take.

Thanks Mike, The account key issue is understood. The attempt to reinstall v4 sounds suitable to try, however as mentioned, the current install of v4 is present and won’t open (“Developer needs to update this version” message appears). The v4 had no issues prior to this last iOS update. Also, I had contemplated this and checked the App Store but no v4 was available, only your latest v5 appears to be there. As far as reinstalling v4 and accessing an iCloud sync, I had checked my iCloud Drive hierarchy hoping to see two mSecure folders (as you had implied earlier) and only see a single mSecure folder, given the dark blue icon on it, I presume is the v5 folder (folder label within is a unique generated label). Is there a way to peruse and retain the attachments folder etc. locally on my iPhone first, before reinstall v4, then relocate said folders back to their appropriate spot after v4 install (if that is even possible itself)? A side note here is that with v4 prior to choosing to iCloud sync, I had been syncing to Dropbox long ago (and/or manually storing some backup files there, not sure if the folder structure was created by me or by v4). Either way, since all this has occurred I have perused there and have an attachment folder containing all encrypted jpg files. Curiously, I counted individually every single record with missing photos in my v5 and come up with a total of about 220 photos that should be there, and of course there are only about 137 residing in the Dropbox folder.
Also, I presume it is perfectly safe to email myself a current backup from v5 at this point without any concern of interference with our attempt to reinstall v4 (which if successful would negate any need of this backup anyway)?
Contemplating the issue possibly related to the memory swapping aspect, not positive when the last time I’d viewed a photo in my v4 but probably within the past month maybe weeks, so I would have thought that if not all photos at least some would have been resident locally at the time of migration the other day, however every single photo in v5 is missing (placeholders only).

Hi Steve,

Thank you for the extra information here. First, feel free to create a new backup of your data in v5. That is a very good thing to do as we're contemplating troubleshooting the photos issue =)  Should anything go wrong, you'll always be able to go back to that data state with a quick restore.


For iCloud syncing, things were done differently in mSecure 4 than in mSecure 5. The older app was using an older API for iCloud interoperability, and so the data wasn't exposed in a folder. It was an API used before iCloud Drive exposed the documents in your iCloud account like it does now. Unfortunately, it's not possible to get at that data and then move it around like you can now. However, you should still be able to sync the data in from iCloud if you were able to reinstall mSecure 4, which we'll get to if something else doesn't work for getting your photos back.


After you make your email backup in v5, I'm going to have you reset your mSecure 5 account and try the migration again from v4. We have had some success doing this, so it is worth a try to see if some glitch may have caused the photos to be missed the first time around. You can reset the account by first deleting mSecure 5, then follow the instructions here: https://support.msecure.com/en/support/solutions/articles/36000064228-account-reset


After you have reset your account, install mSecure 5 and go through the sign in process where you'll be asked to migrate again. Were you able to do the migration again, and did the photos come in this time?

I am having the same issue above as Steve, i.e. missing all attachments after migrating  from V4 to V5 and looking at the black screen with X and shareable arrow at each top corners after clicking on the attachment icon. 

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