Migrating from v6 license to v7 with membership: Trash not carried forward

dmitch77

I recently migrated my house from two separate 1PW6 licenses to one family membership on 1PW7. The migration went pretty well. (Hey, give the folks who designed and wrote the whole "scan in the QR code from the emergency kit" mechanism a big bonus and a week off! That is utterly spiffy!) However one big surprise was that the contents of the Trash (I.e. recently deleted items) did not get migrated from the old Dropbox-synced vaults to the new 1Password.com vaults. Poof! All that state, all that data, is gone forever.

This was quite a surprise here. Some of us relied on that state. All gone.

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1Password Version: 7.3.2
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: macOS 10.14.6
Sync Type: Old: iCloud and Dropbox, new: 1Password

ag_ana

Hi @dmitch77!

Can you please elaborate a bit on why you would want to migrate deleted items automatically? I would imagine that they have been deleted for a reason. If you want to keep them around, perhaps the best solution would be keeping them in a second "archive" vault instead than in the trash?

If you could let us know your reasoning here, it would help so we can see if there is a workaround we can recommend.

dmitch77

I'd turn the question around and ask: why do items in the trash persist, ever? Why don't they just disappear instantly? If they do persist in normal use, then why don't they persist across a migration?

Ever since the invention of the trash can metaphor, back in the 1980s, it's been a quite standard practice: the trash can is emptied explicitly and manually by the user. I can think of no exception (except for deleted emails). For decades it's been like this.

My partner asked me, after I took care of the family's migration, "hey, what happened to the items in my trash"? "I don't know, they disappeared", I told her. That felt kind of lame on my part; I had signed up to with do a smooth migration for the house. But I got no warning about "hey you should back up your trash because this migration is going to clear it", so I had no idea that I needed to do something extra or special about it.

Surprises like this are...unwelcome when doing major upgrades. :-)

ag_ana

@dmitch77:

I'd turn the question around and ask: why do items in the trash persist, ever? Why don't they just disappear instantly?

I think it's because this is how the trash works also in every operating system. If you move something to the Trash in your Mac, for example, it stays there until you empty the trash, so 1Password behaves the same.

My partner asked me, after I took care of the family's migration, "hey, what happened to the items in my trash"? "I don't know, they disappeared", I told her.

It sounds like the trash is not the correct place for your use case. If you have your old standalone vault inside the app already, I recommend restoring these items and moving them to a separate vault so that they are always accessible.

Thank you also for the feedback about wishing to migrate deleted items! It's not something that comes up very often (I think it's the first time I personally see this), but we appreciate you letting us know how this would be useful to you!

dmitch77

@ag_ana:

I think it's because this is how the trash works also in every operating system. If you move something to the Trash in your Mac, for example, it stays there until you empty the trash, so 1Password behaves the same.

Exactly. That's how it should be. But...the trash on my Mac doesn't get emptied when I update macOS. Why does my 1Password trash get emptied when I update 1Password?

AGAlumB

@dmitch77: It's a good question:

Why does my 1Password trash get emptied when I update 1Password?

It doesn't. You copied your data to a completely different vault, in a 1Password membership account. That doesn't carry along Trash with you. But, if you wish, you could move the items in the Trash to a "Trash"/"Archive" vault and copy that over as well.

dmitch77

@brenty:

But, if you wish, you could move the items in the Trash to a "Trash"/"Archive" vault and copy that over as well.

Well, I could have, if I knew about this before the migration. I suspect it's too late now...

Thanks.

AGAlumB

@dmitch77: It's not too late. 1Password doesn't nuke your data. Do you still have your old vault in Dropbox or iCloud -- the one with the trash you want?

dmitch77

@brenty: It looks like it's gone from iCloud. I didn't manually delete it; it is possible that the migration/conversion process deleted it implicitly?

Ben

The migration process does not remove data from iCloud. What happens when you try to add the iCloud vault?

Ben

dmitch77

OK, there is the old iCloud vault, complete with "old" trash. Cool. What's a good way to move all of that old trash to a new 1Password vault?

Ben

@dmitch77

You'd have to move any items you want to migrate out of the Trash, back into the main part of the vault (using the "restore" button). It isn't possible to move items between vaults while they are in the Trash.

Then you'd copy / move those items into your 1Password.com vault:

Move and copy items

Once you have everything moved over you would again remove the 'Primary' vault from 1Password:
https://support.1password.com/migrate-1password-account/#set-up-your-other-devices

I would take this opportunity to reiterate Ana's point about not using the Trash for storage of items you'd want to keep. Just as with the real world analog, the Trash is for things you don't want anymore. I would anticipate further problems in the future if using it for purposes it isn't intended for.

Ben

dmitch77

Then you'd copy / move those items into your 1Password.com vault:

The user for whom this is whole thing is an issue uses iPad; I haven't figured out a way to move items between vaults on iPadOS. What's the secret sauce for that?

Thanks.

P.S.

Just as with the real world analog, the Trash is for things you don't want anymore.

And I'd reiterate: just as with the the Trash on the desktop for any modern OS, I don't think it's right for the Trash to get emptied without the user's knowledge or consent. Even on an upgrade. Please consider treating this situation as a bug which can be fixed in a future release. I haven't heard a compelling reason not to carry forward the contents of the trash when doing an upgrade like this. I'm hearing from you folks a lot of pushback, and explanations why it doesn't work the way I want it to, but...why not just make it work the way users intuitively expect it to?

Ben

@dmitch77

The guide I linked to explains how to do this on iOS (and iPadOS):

but...why not just make it work the way users intuitively expect it to?

Thanks for the feedback. I can pass that suggestion along to our development team, but even if we were to decide to make that change, it wouldn't happen in the immediate future. We're in the middle of a development cycle right now, where essentially all of the changes we'll be making for the next few months have been planned out. As such, we keep mentioning this so you can plan your usage accordingly.

Ben

dmitch77

The guide I linked to explains how to do this on iOS (and iPadOS):

Ah hah! I hadn't seen that - yup, just what I was looking for.

Thanks again, to you, brenty, ag_ana, and your whole team for the help and consideration on this issue. I wouldn't have dug so deep into this issue if I didn't think 1Password was a great product. It really is. I've been using it every day for years, and overall I'm thoroughly pleased with the upgrade to subscription membership.

Ben

@dmitch77

Ah hah! I hadn't seen that - yup, just what I was looking for.

Great! :)

Thanks again, to you, brenty, ag_ana, and your whole team for the help and consideration on this issue. I wouldn't have dug so deep into this issue if I didn't think 1Password was a great product. It really is. I've been using it every day for years, and overall I'm thoroughly pleased with the upgrade to subscription membership.

Thank you so much for saying so. 😁You are very welcome. We do appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts here.

Ben