How do I merge duplicate entries in 1Password?

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Comments

  • LordLippa
    LordLippa
    Community Member

    (I know that this is a pretty negative post but it is targeted at a specific issue and the way that issue is being handled. Not to the team or service at large. This is one bad thing in a sea of great things. Thank you for those great things.)

    I'm re-upping the request to actually have a 'merge' option for two different items.

    The original post makes a great case as to why this is an important feature and how the need for it can manifest in real life usage. And whilst this is an issue with the sites (I just had it happen with the TicketMaster website) and not 1Password per se, 1Password could and should give us the tools to resolve this.

    It has been requested enough that it should be apparent it is a feature that at a minimum has value.
    This is a common feature in services that manage similar datasets as this (e.g. address books).
    The suggestion that this be worked around through manual cutting-and-pasting defies belief. That just introduces a way for additional mistakes to be made.
    This can (and often is) done without having the app make the merge decisions. When fields exist in both items - prompt the user to choose. You are software developers. You've seen merge in action.

    Simply put - this service manages this dataset for me, but doesn't give me tools to manage that dataset effectively. As such it would be a core component of the service, not a fringe feature.
    And though I understand that it is not without technical, UI, and UX considerations - as a core component of the service, the "it is hard" reasoning sounds hollow.

    As a metaphor: If a word processing app did not have an auto-page-numbering feature, that absence wouldn't impact all users - but it is fair to say that it is an expected feature. If the response to the affected users was "you can type them in manually", we'd all laugh and switch to another service.

    I fully understand that you cannot commit to a time frame for any feature-request or bug-fix.
    Likewise, committing to address a request without evaluating the impact and consequences of the request is also an unfair expectation.

    But you have had that time. The impact and consequences should be understood. Please either commit to addressing this issue or let us know that the issue will not be addressed.

    Cheers

    P.S. there is comedy in the fact that two threads were merged during the discourse on this issue ;)

  • SV1passUser
    SV1passUser
    Community Member

    Original poster here. I've been using 1Password for a long time, and I was hoping for a Merge feature since long before I made the original post. I have many logins I would love to merge for various reasons -- things that make logical sense to me, like Sears and Shop Your Way that use a shared authentication, and things that have changed login pages over time. It does look like at least some competitors have a merge function (aka deduplicator). Even a basic merge function would be useful to me, I don't absolutely have to have automated matching and merge suggestions. Every time I browse my vault, I feel like the amount of untidiness is more than I am willing to manage in one sitting, so it just sits, festering, until the next time I look at it and consider the alternatives.

    Thanks again for reading and for creating a great product!

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni
    edited March 2017

    @LordLippa: I get what you're saying, but it's not the joke you seem to think it is. It simply makes more sense to have this discussion all in a single place. After all, otherwise it would be more difficult to discuss, and to you it would seem like even fewer people had requested a similar feature. ;)

    But we need to keep all of this in context. There are many much more popular requests, so we're going to tend to prioritize the things that will benefit a greater number of users. Similarly, what's being requested here is pretty vague and not necessarily actionable, even if a dozen or so like-minded people would like it to happen.

    Certainly 1Password can help us sort out a lot of messes when it comes to managing login credentials, and it would be nice if it could do something like this for us too. If it isn't hard, lay it out for us. How do you propose that a "merge" feature would actually work? Just off the top of my head, a big problem I'd personally run into is that I have dozens of Google logins. I really don't want those merged. It seems me me that this is a much bigger ask than "merging logins" implies. You may say something about having the user choose, but that's kind of a big step back toward how 1Password works now: it only does what you tell it to, and it sounds like some would prefer that it automate some aspects of data management. There simply isn't any logic in 1Password to do anything like that currently, so "merge" is just the tip of a much bigger iceberg. Also, we have seen merging in action, and it often has undesirable results for users. And, more significantly, what is "undesirable" for one person will be exactly what another wants. Stating that we've had time and should have a solution by now really seems to trivialize the issue — especially considering how important it seems to be to you.

    That said, I don't see your post as negative at all. Even if I disagree with your assessment, I think that constructive feedback like this is important. But it simply isn't actionable, and this isn't a priority for us at this time. I'd love to hear specifically what you'd like us to do to help with this problem though. Even if I can't promise you anything now, getting a sense of exactly what you and others are looking for (which will vary) may help us come up with a solution for the future. Thanks for your passion! :)

  • LordLippa
    LordLippa
    Community Member

    Thanks @brenty
    I do understand that this can quickly go down feature-creep creek, and there be demons.

    Also - I know there have been some comments about cookie-cutter responses (myself included), but the real measure of customer service cannot reasonably be the complete absence of those responses. Sometimes they are the appropriate response - especially before the full weight of customer sentiment is understood. Thank you for providing real interaction and discussion!
    (Always lead with a thank you ;) )

    It looks like there are two issues here.
    1) Actual merge - for when you have two items that should be one, say because they have become associated with slightly different URLs etc.
    2) Pure duplicate remover.

    I'm specifically interested in (1), but I don't want to just ignore (2) - especially as it seems to manifest (a) somewhat frequently and (b) in a manner that makes the solution somewhat easier than a true merge feature.

    Thoughts on (2) - pure duplicate remover.
    Earlier in the thread there was reference to duplicate items being truly different because they have different IDs in the record table. I may be misunderstanding the intent of that reply - as that seems to just be a different way of stating the issue as opposed to presenting a reason why the issue is difficult to resolve. Two items should have different IDs. They would only be one item if they didn't. If every field in those two items are the same, then they are duplicates.
    The people that want to remove duplicates just want something that (a) helps them find those instances and (b) helps them remove them.
    Proposal:
    In the left view, below 'categories' and 'security audit', there would be a 'house cleaning' section (only with a better name).
    It would list 'pure duplicates' (only with a better name). That is; items that have every field contain the same data. Similar to the 'duplicate password' count, but instead of only comparing the password field, it would compare all fields.
    With the 'pure duplicates' entry highlighted, the middle view would show duplicates grouped in a similar way to the current 'duplicate password' groups items.
    From there, items can be selected, edited, and removed. The item view list (middle view) should immediately update to remove an item that no longer has a duplicate.
    Potential stretch goals:

    • Provide a 'remove all duplicates' button.
    • Have multiple duplicate types in the 'house cleaning' section (more bad names follow):
      • 'pure duplicates' as above
      • 'near duplicates' this is similar to 'pure' but will match items even if one or both have extra fields. That is, the user may have added a note to one version of the item - so it is no longer a pure duplicate, but it doesn't have contradictory information.
      • 'similar items' this is basically for the merge scenario below. This allows for some fields to be contradictory and the user can manage this through the merge process. (see below - I have little faith in this)
        Potential issues:
    • I can see that care would need to be taken to resolve linked items correctly - but that just seems like 'work is hard' as opposed to 'paradigm is flawed'.

    • If the user doesn't use this immediately, they could quickly end up with branched duplicates (one item is updated when the other isn't.) As this is a pure duplicate detector, those would no longer be detected by this.
    • I believe that you keep the history of some/all fields? Merging two histories is probably a bridge too far and fraught with unexpected consequences. Alternatively, the deleted item could still be linked as a 'deleted duplicate'. I suspect that is also a complication that is more trouble than any potential benefit. I believe the loss of the history of one item is acceptable in this scenario.
    • I think the difficulty with the 'similar items' suggestion above is what to key it from. It should never list multiple accounts on the same service as something that are similar. That leads to confusion and user error - a worse crime than any missing feature. As much as I would love help in finding items to merge - I suspect it is more of a 'paradigm is flawed' idea. Open to ideas though ;)

    As I say - I'm more concerned with (1) - merge items.
    Proposal:
    When viewing an item in edit mode, provide a 'merge' button.
    If the user presses the 'merge' button, bring up an item search dialog (potentially with suggestions - but I accept that this is feature creep)
    After the user selects a 2nd item, they are presented with a new merge tool. Three views, left is the original item. middle is the selected merge item. Right is the new resultant item.
    Individual fields are highlighted in either green or red. Green make it to the new item, red do not.
    Some fields can have multiple versions - so you can have them be green in both of the originating items.
    Potential issues: (similar to above)

    • I can see that care would need to be taken to resolve linked items correctly - but that just seems like 'work is hard' as opposed to 'paradigm is flawed'.
    • Managing the history of merged fields seems like a nightmare. This could be important if you need the previous version of a password, or the previous answer to security questions (why do they still exist...?). I have no real answer to resolve this. I'm not familiar enough with your schema to know how difficult merging histories would be - but I expect it is too difficult. That said - the loss of history is the current behaviour through manual merges, so I believe it is acceptable in this scenario.

    Cheers

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    @LordLippa: First of all, likewise, thanks for engaging, and taking the time to tell us exactly what you're looking for. I'm not saying this is true for you, but it does worry me a bit when we get this specific and in-depth that someone might take the interaction as this is something that will definitely happen, and be similar to the proposal. So I do want to be upfront in saying that this just isn't something we have the bandwidth to work on right now, and I can't make promises for the future as well.

    That said, you raise some great points. I think that something like this should go a lot farther, but perhaps we're on the same page that it might be best to focus on logins since that's likely the most common use case. Suffice to say that I'll share your feedback (and others) with the team so that we can take all of this into consideration if and when we do tackle "merging" (for lack of a better term). I think this is a great summary, and something to focus on:

    The people that want to remove duplicates just want something that (a) helps them find those instances and (b) helps them remove them.

    A thought I had as a result of these comments is that a side-by-side comparison of two items might be a less complex (and risky) way of presenting the user with a choice between similar items. Our old sync conflict window was like this. A lot of folks seem to be asking for something more advanced than that though, so I'm not sure that's necessarily the best approach, just an option.

    And I'll be honest: If this is something we end up doing in the future, a lot of this will likely require 1Password.com, since from an implementation perspective supporting multiple legacy formats will be a lot of work for limited benefit, especially since from a technical perspective we have some tools we can actually use with the newer data structures (e.g. item history) to facilitate this which could potentially be used to make it smarter and therefore more useful. Data loss is the primary risk here, but 1Password.com eliminates that since it's possible to roll back or recover an item. The only fallback that exists in legacy vaults is password history. That ain't nothin', but it leaves a lot more data subject to human or machine error.

    In the end, I do hope we can do something in this area in the future, since we're all only accumulating more and more data over time, and the importance of making it easier for us to manage it will follow that same curve as well. But I do think there are other things we can do to help with data management that can have a much greater impact, which is why this isn't something we're focused on right now. Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts on this. :)

    ref: OPM-1804

  • LordLippa
    LordLippa
    Community Member

    Thanks @brenty!
    I wouldn't assume that any executed solution would match my proposal. That'd be pretty myopic on my part. As you asked for proposals, I tried to provide some. I'd expect that the best design proposal would come from within the team there as they know and understand the underlying architecture the best.

    Per your comment about this (or some variant of this) functionality being only available through the .com portal - I agree. Whilst I do believe this is a feature akin to core functionality - I understand that it isn't something that is used frequently. The apps should cover the "I do this function 99% of the times I interact with the service", and the more intensive interactions should be limited to the website. At least in my opinion ;)

    And I understand (and appreciate) that this is continued conversation - and by no means a commitment. Though I'm hopeful that we are getting to a point where an achievable solution is on the horizon. ;)
    Of course, I'm not sure what the "...other things we can do to help with data management that can have a much greater impact..." are. As they revolve around 'data management' and not some other peripheral functionality - I'm excited to find out. I hope the fill a need.

    Cheers

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    Thanks again for the feedback! Cheers! :)

  • robfol
    robfol
    Community Member

    It is ridiculous that this feature has not been implemented! It is a pretty basic requirement for any database, something I use all the time in Daylite. Drives me nuts that I cannot carry out this simple operation in 1P.
    Can you explain what the problem is please? Cheers Robert

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    @robfol: Since you're coming in late, definitely check our Kevin's earlier post. Not so simple. Personally, I find that not creating a bunch of duplicates (and therefore work for myself) in the first place is easier than coding a feature like this, but that's just me. But if you're volunteering your skills, we may have a job for you. ;)

  • Lee Fuhr
    Lee Fuhr
    Community Member
    edited May 2017

    I'm resisting the urge to join the pitchforky "this is ridiculous" crowd but this is… uhhhh… hmmmm… unexpected. I'd really like to see this feature too. I have so many duplicate logins, likely due in some part to how I've tried to embrace the growing features set over the years I've been with 1Password. Now I have a Family AND a Team plan, and duplicates abound.

    I'm not even talking about merging. Let's leave that aside. I'm talking about not having two of the exact. same. thing.

    Here, lookie:

    Do you see a difference whatsoever for these two logins? I don't. How'd the dupe get there? I assure you it wasn't due to any intention on my part. I have hundreds of these. Among other things, it adds a step or two every single time I use 1P to log in to a site, since it has to bother me to pick which of the dupes I want to use (when they would both result in EXACTLY the same thing happening).

    And I appreciate prioritizing the most commonly requested updates, but Google had no problem helping me find many, many, many threads each filled with many, many people asking for this. http://cozy.es/oFtDU

    Blah.

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    @Lee Fuhr: I appreciate the irony, but I have yet to see a case where telling 1Password to copy/move an item once produced multiple copies. In every instance I've seen, this happens because of copying the same data over multiple times, often because the migration process was repeated on multiple devices. For example:

    1. 1Password for Mac: Copy Primary vault to Personal
    2. 1Password for iOS: Copy Primary vault to Personal
      = Personal vault has 2 of each item

    Definitely frustrating, and if 1Password is somehow doing this on its own in your case, we'd definitely appreciate diagnostics so we can figure out why.

    Otherwise, it will likely be simplest to create a new vault, copy your original data over again only once, and if you've made changes to some items already since migrating, sorting by "date modified" will help you quickly identify those and copy them over to the new vault. You'll still end up with "duplicates" of those you'd updated, but that should be more manageable. And if you need help with any of that, just let us know the details and we can break it down further.

  • Lee Fuhr
    Lee Fuhr
    Community Member

    @brenty I'm sort of stymied. It's off-brand, in my experience, to essentially be blaming the user for this. I am, on the scale of things, savvy with this stuff. I'm the guy my friends go to for help with their computers. I run a web design shop. (But the scale of tech-savviness goes well past me.)

    Yet you seem to be saying this situation only happens when we screw something up, and that the easiest way to deal with it is to do so manually. To do something that computers are immeasurably more efficient than humans.

    Sure, we can sort by date modified. That's… something?

    We're customers, and we're using your product to its fullest, with the best intentions and efforts. And there are tons of us. And you think there's nothing the product can do to make this better? Fair to assume you're on the engineering side, not the product side? Can a product person from AgileBits chime in maybe?

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    @Lee Fuhr: I'm not saying that at all. What I'm saying is that this is what I've seen happen. I don't know in your case, as there isn't much to go on. It's entirely possible that this is due to a bug we need to fix. But without more information I can only make an educated guess based on my own experience. If something else is happening in your case, we can certainly investigate. Just send a diagnostics report and the steps you took where you ran into trouble to support+forums@agilebits.com with a link to this discussion and your username in the email so we can 'connect the dots', and post your Support ID here so we can confirm that we've received it.

    And as I mentioned previously, we'll continue to consider ways of improving the user experience here. If you have specific suggestions in the regard, they'd be greatly appreciated. But since this isn't a feature 1Password has, I wanted to offer a pragmatic solution that will help you get things sorted out now since you you'd reached out for assistance. Did you try my suggestions? I can't be more specific than that without some basic information about your setup, but I'll be happy to help in any way I can. I just can't offer you a feature that will solve this problem for you which does not exist. It may be something we can add in the future though, so the feedback is appreciated.

  • gneely74
    gneely74
    Community Member

    I agree completely with all the previous comments and requests. It. is. ridiculous. I am a longtime user, since 2008. This app is, at its core, a database with items. This database can be sync'd across device types, and now shared between different human users. The potential for database items to be duplicated is high. Maybe its a long since sync bug that was fixed, maybe its through my own human error, maybe its because my wife has accidentally duplicated some of our share logins, I do not know or care. But the end result is I have a less than optimal DB of logins and passwords.

    It is absurd to expect the user to manually try and compare each of these entries when "the machine" can do some of the heavy lifting for us, and do it with less error. I am sure many, many of my duplicates are EXACTLY the same. It should be trivial to at least ferret this out and clean this up. Why do we not have this?

    I mean, forget the UUID stuff, does this item contain the exact same information? Is username, URL and password the same? The at least GIVE ME THE OPTION to merge them. I don't want you going willy nilly and merging/deleting stuff, but for crying out load, give me a course of action besides put all you items into a new vault and weed out the dupes manually. If I am going to do that, its like starting over, so why not look at competitors? You guys were the only real game in town back in 2008. Not so anymore, I don't want to leave you, but I also am getting tired of the crud in my database. So give me better tools for the U part of CRUD and I can use that to remove some crud.

    Please, pretty please, with sugar on top.

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    Hi @gneely74 -- first of all, thanks so much for being such a long-time user! You guys that jumped on board early are literally responsible for 1Password being able to grow from its beginnings into what it is today. We don't forget it. And we also don't take customer feedback lightly. Quite a number of the features you see in 1Password today arose in part from learning from direct interaction with users like you, what the community wanted or had problems with. We welcome every bit of feedback: good, bad or merely informational.

    With that said, it would not be even possible in many instances, let alone practical or advisable to attempt to fulfill every user request. We don't expect to necessarily be cut any slack for the decisions we make surrounding what moves forward and what doesn't, but we do want to make sure users know that just because a feature request isn't worked on right away, doesn't mean it's not going to be. I don't have any information to share with you on that score currently, but I will certainly add your request to the others from this thread and elsewhere asking for such a feature. Thanks for weighing in!

  • LMGotts
    LMGotts
    Community Member
    edited September 2017

    I'm here for the pile-on. Between all of the versions and options and updates over the many years, and now having signed up for a family account, I've ended up with a crap-ton of duplicates. Perusing the many threads from people asking on how to fix these, I keep seeing questions asking how did it happen. Well, the bottom line is that's not what we (the customers) are asking for. We're asking for a way to merge duplicates. That's it. I've had to adopt LastPass for my team at work and while I don't love it, it's good to know it's there. I'll probably fight through the morass that 1PassWord has become, and figure out a way to stick with it, but I must say, it's has evolved into a frustrating app to navigate and manage (to "use"), and facing the task of plowing through >2k entries to manually merge/delete duplicates is not something that I'm looking forward to. At all. No reply necessary (unless you have a new feature to tell us about), just add this to your "another request submitted" list... Thanks for all you do, bottom line is - we just signed up as a family!!

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    I'm here for the pile-on. Between all of the versions and options and updates over the many years, and now having signed up for a family account, I've ended up with a crap-ton of duplicates. Perusing the many threads from people asking on how to fix these, I keep seeing questions asking how did it happen. Well, the bottom line is that's not what we (the customers) are asking for. We're asking for a way to merge duplicates. That's it.

    @LMGotts: I hear you. But how? Unless we get it exactly right, 1Password will be making your life harder. It's less of a risk as far as data loss now that 1Password.com includes automatic offsite backup, but I'm not sure that restoring data is much more fun than deleting duplicates. We'd just be trading one problem for another. 1Password just has no way of knowing what your "correct" data — the data you want — is. This is something we'd like to do though, so we'll see what we can come up with. It won't ever see release though unless it solves a problem without causing more.

    I'll probably fight through the morass that 1PassWord has become, and figure out a way to stick with it, but I must say, it's has evolved into a frustrating app to navigate and manage (to "use"), and facing the task of plowing through >2k entries to manually merge/delete duplicates is not something that I'm looking forward to. At all. No reply necessary (unless you have a new feature to tell us about), just add this to your "another request submitted" list... Thanks for all you do, bottom line is - we just signed up as a family!!

    I hate to say it, but I'd really like to know how you ended up with all the duplicates. Otherwise it feels like we're only treating the symptom. I appreciate that it may feel a bit crappy to get asked this when you're already frustrated, but there's probably something we can improve to help people avoid getting into this sort of mess in the first place with a better understanding of the why and how. I'm really sorry for the trouble you've had, and we do want to help people from both angles if we can. Thanks for your feedback on this, and with your support we'll continue to improve 1Password for everyone. :blush:

  • humann
    humann
    Community Member

    I want this merge feature too. A lot.

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    Thanks for letting us know! We can't promise anything right now, but perhaps we'll be able to in the future. :)

  • Huh?
    Huh?
    Community Member

    Add another frustrated long-time user who wants this feature. I don't even have the patience to read the detailed design spec submitted above, but I suspect "great" has become the enemy of "clumsy but usable". Let me select two password entries and click merge. Then make me do the merge. Heck, dump both of the original password entries in the trash, and start a new one. If I flush the trash without checking how well I merged something, its on me.

    I'm now in hour three or four of weeding through my 1password database for old duplicates etc. The reason I paid for versions on PC, android and ios and mac is I need an industrial strength password management tool. If I were just a Apple fanatic with 100 passwords, I'd just use keychain and save my money. But I am not, I'm a power user with hundreds of accounts to keep track of (in my case its 700, though if the database trimming/maintenance were better it would probably be 500 or less.)

    I spent the last nine months using Windows as my main machine, and that really rubbed my nose in how bad the PC version of this was. This may be the last straw sadly.

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni
    edited September 2017

    @Huh?: I hear you. The tough part is that the vast majority of feedback we get is "I want to merge", "how do I merge?", and "why can't I merge"; but it's difficult to find a solution to a problem without fully understanding the cause. Where/why are these duplicates being created in the first place? That's really something we need to take into account if we develop something like this, as helping people avoid running into the trouble in the first place is best for everyone, and all of this also informs how we have 1Password handle duplicates/merging. :blush:

    Regarding the solution you propose:

    Let me select two password entries and click merge.

    That sounds like magic. I would love it if it worked that way. But that handwaves the whole thing — which I guess is another magician reference. :lol:

    So you've got two items, similar enough for you (and presumably 1Password) to recognize, but different enough that you wouldn't want 1Password to just pick one at random and Trash it. Is that a fair description?

    At that point, what do we do with the data that is merged from two items into one. It seems like creating a new one with the combined data would be good. That way you can still go back to the originals if needed, unlike if 1Password copies all the data from one into the other.

    But then is 1Password just sticking the data from each into separate sections and marking it as a conflict? That doesn't seem so helpful, but the alternative is 1Password deciding that the password in this one is good but the other isn't, and so on with the rest of the item details.

    I don't know what the answer is there, and that's why we haven't done something like this yet. As it stands, it's only reliable for a human to decide what's good and what can be tossed out. I can't imagine if my Mac arbitrarily deleted things it thought I didn't need. iOS 11 has a similar feature now, and even though it just deletes apps and keeps their data, it still scares me a bit. Probably something we'll have to get used to though as machine learning and AI become more prevalent. :dizzy:

  • Huh?
    Huh?
    Community Member

    But...But...But...! Already you are making it more complicated and more automated than I want! I don't want 1Password to find the duplicates, I can do that!

    ...And the idea that you can not put up a screen that shows two records side-by-side and makes me pick which field from each record gets used, and which gets deleted just can not be that hard. Heck, display three columns, with the third column being the new record, and I have to create each field myself. I told you I want clumsy, and clumsy I would take (and later complain about as all users are wont:-), but at least you'd get to brag that you've got the check-off on the feature chart w/ Lashpast and RobotFarmer!

    And secondly, those duplicate password cows have been leaving my 1Password barn at the rate of twenty a year for a decade. Nailing one of my idiot hands to each door to prevent me from doing whatever it is that caused me to make this happen is good for the future, but is not a useful solution to MY problem at this point :-) (and thats just presuming this is a problem that CAN be prevented. BTW)

    For one, I would just like to be able to have two entries up on the screen at the same time. Do that and ferget the dumb merge I asked for. Right now, even after I have identified the two items to merge, it takes a stupid amount of hopping back and forth manually between two entries, trying to figure out which one has more data, which has the newer password, etc. etc. If I had two index cards this would be easier than having those two records stuck inside the dumb one-record-at-a-time 1Password Viewmaster machine.

    Wait a minit: It just hit me that I could open up a remote desktop onto my other machine so's I can look at both records at the same time. I guess that's what I will do, but you do understand how stupid that is for a version 6 product right?

    ...And if that lame 3-column feature is still too difficult to implement because I really don't get it, then implement the feature in your newly named "Agile Labs" menu, that has to be enabled, with much skull-and-crossbones "Monsters-be-there" legaleeze and warnings about what idots any user would be to use it, and here are the sixteen things we know are wrong with it, and will never be fixed.

    I've gotta leave the barn and run around like a headless chicken for a while to cool off, as usual I'm getting overheated :-)

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni
    edited September 2017

    But...But...But...! Already you are making it more complicated and more automated than I want! I don't want 1Password to find the duplicates, I can do that!

    @Huh?: ROFL sorry about that! You see what we have to deal with? ;)

    But in all seriousness, we do get requests for just the thing I described. Certainly others want different things though. It's hard to settle on something that would go far enough to be useful but not so far that it gets in people's way. :dizzy:

    ...And the idea that you can not put up a screen that shows two records side-by-side and makes me pick which field from each record gets used, and which gets deleted just can not be that hard. Heck, display three columns, with the third column being the new record, and I have to create each field myself. I told you I want clumsy, and clumsy I would take (and later complain about as all users are wont:-), but at least you'd get to brag that you've got the check-off on the feature chart w/ Lashpast and RobotFarmer!

    That still sounds like a super manual process, and at that point we're just talking about being able to display multiple items' details at once...but it may be that we need to start with something like that. 1Password isn't designed as a "multiple document" app so even that would be a bug change, but it's one of the things we're considering.

    And secondly, those duplicate password cows have been leaving my 1Password barn at the rate of twenty a year for a decade. Nailing one of my idiot hands to each door to prevent me from doing whatever it is that caused me to make this happen is good for the future, but is not a useful solution to MY problem at this point :-) (and thats just presuming this is a problem that CAN be prevented. BTW)

    Haha true enough. We do have to think of the bigger picture for all 1Password users, present and future, but you're right that we have to start somewhere. :)

    For one, I would just like to be able to have two entries up on the screen at the same time. Do that and ferget the dumb merge I asked for. Right now, even after I have identified the two items to merge, it takes a stupid amount of hopping back and forth manually between two entries, trying to figure out which one has more data, which has the newer password, etc. etc. If I had two index cards this would be easier than having those two records stuck inside the dumb one-record-at-a-time 1Password Viewmaster machine.

    Yep, that makes perfect sense!

    Wait a minit: It just hit me that I could open up a remote desktop onto my other machine so's I can look at both records at the same time. I guess that's what I will do, but you do understand how stupid that is for a version 6 product right?

    Honestly, I've done that on my Mac using the 1Password app and 1Password.com at least once that I can remember. There are three reasons we don't have something like this already: when the current app was designed (2012's 1Password 4 is the beginning of the codebase), we all had a lot less data. 1Password also had fewer users, so those with similar issues to this were much fewer as well. And of course as it's become clear over time that this is a problem begging for a solution (really, within the last year, since 1Password.com was introduced and all of our databases grew exponentially within families and teams, and across all platforms) we haven't been able to pin down exactly what we should do to address it. So I'm glad for discussions like this.

    ...And if that lame 3-column feature is still too difficult to implement because I really don't get it, then implement the feature in your newly named "Agile Labs" menu, that has to be enabled, with much skull-and-crossbones "Monsters-be-there" legaleeze and warnings about what idots any user would be to use it, and here are the sixteen things we know are wrong with it, and will never be fixed. I've gotta leave the barn and run around like a headless chicken for a while to cool off, as usual I'm getting overheated :-)

    Hey, I think we could both use the fresh air. Thanks so much for your thoughtful (and, I thought, humourous) feedback on this topic! :lol:

    ref: OPM-1804

  • MrC
    MrC
    Volunteer Moderator
    edited September 2017

    I can't offer a solution here @Huh? , but when I test changes to a converter from the converter suite, I use a rapid cycle flip between two adjacent records to spot differences. This works really well on OS X, but the records need to be sorted next to each other, such that the arrow keys Up and Down switch you between the two records. Your eye is really good at spotting change, so you can just flip between the records once or twice. No "motion" on the screen means no changes, so they are duplicates. Changes will pop out clearly as you cycle between them. You can get through many records very quickly like this.

    Hope this helps!

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    @MrC: I think we need to do better, but that's a really good hack that can help in the mean time. Thanks! :)

  • Thus is Huh? here. I looks like you can not change your avatar name. I will say I'm sorta bummed to leave the old one behind, given that you are not allowed to use question marks in your screen-names anymore (the old account wouldn't let me add a photo either....

    Thanks for a thoughtful reply both of you. I did not realize you were hamstrung by a codebase that did not allow multiple documents. I thought only Microsoft had APIs that could trap you into that metaphor, I've never written code for Mac.

    Here is the final laugh (sad and knowing) sorta like the end of "Man on the Moon" bio-pic, where Andy Kaufman discovers that the Mexican healer he has gone to is a fake. I just signed up for a LashPast account, figuring that they must have good duplicate removal. I'd run my database through their blender, and then import it back. It found ten whole duplicates automagically, and as far as I can tell, they do not do merge either.

    Now the reason this is Andy Kaufman-esque is that the reason I selected 1Password over LastPass was to avoid uploading my database to a server run by the vendor of the program... And as a note to anybody else planning to follow in my footsteps, you are probably in for an hour of screwing around with how to export your data securely, I can't tell you how long to get it back because I'm bailing on that.

    Guess what world, here is probably the main reason 1Password, LastPass, RoboForm do not do merge. Because as far as I can tell NOBODY does it (well). Dashlane crashed twice (on Mac El Capitan) before it could open its first window, so I don't know about that one, its uninstalled. Until one of the major password manager tool vendors implements this, I suspect nobody will.

    I know I've been a little rough on you guys, and its unfortunate that I somehow selected "Huh?" as my nome-de-plume here when I created my forum account. I did not appreciate that the whole password management world just blew up and so coding choices made during another era are now biting you in the butt.

    Plus you have been through the wringer getting on and keeping up to date at least 5 platforms. (Just trying to stay on the Firefox treadmill must be a pain, I switched to Chrome like ages ago, and it looks like years later they are still churning)

    I think I must have been ahead of my time, because I had 75 passwords by the end of 2008, and have added 75/2009, 60/2010, 115 in 2011, 75/2012, 80/2013, 95/2014, 105/2015, 140/2016, and 75 so far in 2017. (interesting how there was a jump in 2011, might have been the year I switched from Android to iOS, (and switched back again in 2015/2016.)

    Even though I have a lone-wolf IT business, I make a point of not even using this for client passwords, so these are mostly for low-importance web-forum and app-stupidity.

    My best,

    -Dave

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    Thus is Huh? here. I looks like you can not change your avatar name. I will say I'm sorta bummed to leave the old one behind, given that you are not allowed to use question marks in your screen-names anymore (the old account wouldn't let me add a photo either....

    @Daves_Not_Here_Man: Ah! Hello again! :lol:

    Hmm. It isn't an intentional restriction, but no the forum software can have trouble with characters outside of alphanumeric and a few symbols (_ -)

    Thanks for a thoughtful reply both of you. I did not realize you were hamstrung by a codebase that did not allow multiple documents. I thought only Microsoft had APIs that could trap you into that metaphor, I've never written code for Mac.

    I wouldn't say we're trapped, but given that we've built everything on a single document model from the very beginning a lot of things would break if we don't rethink and redesign things carefully. Just a lot of assumptions based on how 1Password has worked for its first decade. Definitely worth reevaluating though as we develop 1Password going forward. :blush:

    I'd run my database through their blender, and then import it back. It found ten whole duplicates automagically, and as far as I can tell, they do not do merge either. [...] And as a note to anybody else planning to follow in my footsteps, you are probably in for an hour of screwing around with how to export your data securely, I can't tell you how long to get it back because I'm bailing on that.

    Yeah, there isn't a way to export securely, as then another app wouldn't be able to read the data. But exporting to an encrypted disk image would be a way to sort of do it. But it's tough to maintain that with several pieces of software involved.

    Until one of the major password manager tool vendors implements this, I suspect nobody will.

    That's a really good point. I can't promise anything right now, but I'd like us to be the first. And, failing that, we'll strive to be the best.

    I know I've been a little rough on you guys, and its unfortunate that I somehow selected "Huh?" as my nome-de-plume here when I created my forum account. I did not appreciate that the whole password management world just blew up and so coding choices made during another era are now biting you in the butt. Plus you have been through the wringer getting on and keeping up to date at least 5 platforms. (Just trying to stay on the Firefox treadmill must be a pain, I switched to Chrome like ages ago, and it looks like years later they are still churning)

    Hey, fair is fair. We knew what we signed up for (well, maybe not at first, but it quickly became clear that we'd always be playing catchup with browser and OS releases).

    I'm sorry we can't offer you a better solution right now, but it means a lot to me and the rest of the team that people hold us to such a high standard and expect the best from us. We can agree that dealing with duplicates in 1Password is currently not the best experience, and something we need to work on. So thoughtful, constructive feedback like this is always welcome and appreciated.

    And frankly, the name you chose made me smile. :)

  • Daves_Not_Here_Man
    Daves_Not_Here_Man
    Community Member

    Well I figured if I'm going to complain so much, you should at least know my first name!

    As for the newer avatar name, it got truncated... the whole thing was supposed to read "Dave's Not Here Man!", which if you are as old as I am clues you into an old Cheech and Chong skit which is worth finding on Youtube if you like their dumb stoner humor.

    Anyway, I have gotten one of my many late-mid-life freakout temper tantrums over with, and will now buckle down to making more suggestions for your developers' endless to-do list.

    By the way, it was the whole exporting to an encrypted disk image that took me longer than I am willing to admit to getting right. It does not help that when you create a non-writeable image, and then try to export a .1pif or .csv to it, 1Password silently does nothing, instead of telling you that something is wrong. I guess that is an error report of sorts.

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    Well I figured if I'm going to complain so much, you should at least know my first name!

    @Daves_Not_Here_Man: Ha! Fair enough. :)

    As for the newer avatar name, it got truncated... the whole thing was supposed to read "Dave's Not Here Man!", which if you are as old as I am clues you into an old Cheech and Chong skit which is worth finding on Youtube if you like their dumb stoner humor.

    Definitely familiar. ;)

    Anyway, I have gotten one of my many late-mid-life freakout temper tantrums over with, and will now buckle down to making more suggestions for your developers' endless to-do list.

    Yeah, if you've got other comments, questions, or suggestions, we're listening! :chuffed:

    By the way, it was the whole exporting to an encrypted disk image that took me longer than I am willing to admit to getting right. It does not help that when you create a non-writeable image, and then try to export a .1pif or .csv to it, 1Password silently does nothing, instead of telling you that something is wrong. I guess that is an error report of sorts.

    Ah, that is worth reporting. Thank you! I've never actually had the occasion to try that myself, so I appreciate you mentioning it. Cheers! :)

    ref: OPM-5334

  • djsteen
    djsteen
    Community Member

    I would also like the merge feature. I was actually surprised it doesn't exist. Selecting two (or more) items and right-clicking should display a merge option (among other options).

    My situation: I created half the details of an account when applying for a credit card. Once I received the card, the other half of my account details were added to a new item since the URLs were different.

    Thank you in advance.

This discussion has been closed.