display of email address for email entry

I apologise for the unhelpful nature of the title. I also apologise if this is a duplicate item. I searched for other threads on the topic. The first 15 pages of results didn't contain a match that I saw.

When I create a new entry in 1Password and select Email Account, the username (which should always be an email address for an email account, I would imagine) field type is Text. This seemed odd to me, so I edited an existing Email Account entry, changing the field type to Email.

When I saved the entry, the username/email address no longer displayed in the list of entries. It was replaced by a single hyphen (-). Changing the field type back to Text had no effect. The only way I found to get the list of entries to show the email address again was to create an new entry and leave the field type set to Text.

Is this intentional? If so, please help me understand why.


1Password Version: 7.3.684
Extension Version: 4.7.4.90
OS Version: Windows 10 Home v1803 OS build 17134.799 (64-bit)
Sync Type: 1P default

Comments

  • I believe you input your e-mail address in the label field rather than the actual blank field for the username, @PellaAndroid. Edit the item, replace your e-mail address with the label you want (username, email, etc.), then click under that label and type your e-mail address itself. In my testing this has the username/e-mail persist regardless of field type. :+1:

  • I would love to see an example, @PellaAndroid. That said, it doesn't need to include real data – you can create an item with fake data in edit mode, screenshot it, and post it here if you'd like. If you'd still rather move things over to e-mail, that's a-okay as well. You can shoot an e-mail to support+windows@1password.com and I can take a peek there. If you share the support ID you get via autoreply here, that'll ensure I get to it a bit quicker. It'll look like [#ABC-123-4567]. Again, though, here with test data is fine with me if it's okay by you. Whatever you prefer. :+1:

  • Ah-ha. Thanks so much, @PellaAndroid – you said "list of entries" and I was here thinking that you're talking about the actual entries in the item details, not the address listed under the title in the item list. I see that as well – thank you!

    So, first off, the username isn't necessarily going to be an e-mail address. Each service is different, but the username/password pair in an e-mail account item is going to be whatever username you enter when signing into webmail with your e-mail provider (or setting it up in your e-mail client, as the case may be). Gmail these days uses the full e-mail address, but back when I was in college, our e-mail portal just used everything before the @ symbol. I honestly can't say whether that's something that's at all common these days (it's been a bit since I graduated and all my current e-mail services use the full address), but the default to text makes sense in that context.

    With that said, this is actually the intended behavior. The username field is part of the item template so it gets special treatment like having that username indexed as the subtitle right under that item title in the list. When you change it, it loses its special status as part of the template and is considered a custom field so it won't be indexed and the subtitle stops being shown. If you want to restore that functionality, you can restore the version of the item with the unaltered field type from Item History. :+1:

  • Greg
    Greg
    1Password Alumni

    Hi @PellaAndroid,

    Email Accounts category in 1Password are useful, if you run your own email server or want to store email server information. As you can see, it has a lot of specific fields (screenshot taken in 1Password 7 for Mac):

    If you have a simple login (Gmail.com, Outlook.com, etc.). and store Username, password, and URL there, a Login item in 1Password will be enough. Moreover, it will display properly in the list of Logins:

    Let me know if it helps. Thank you!

    Cheers,
    Greg

  • MrC
    MrC
    Volunteer Moderator

    The Email category is a legacy category, created when it was common practice for users to know and use POP, IMAP, and SMTP names and ports.

    But as most users now use one of the few big providers, email clients now auto-configure this info, or users use the web portal.

    A few of us use other Email providers, so this category still has some utility (but less so for systems that support importing profiles).

    I believe, as mentioned above, once you’ve changed a field in a 1Password template for a category, the field becomes a custom field, and is no longer part of the template (so changing the type back to the original type does not restore the field).

  • It's not always a practical reason that motivates these things, @PellaAndroid. In fact, I'd say we make a good chunk of our decisions for boring technical reasons and the sake of simplicity. I don't know enough to take that deep of a dive, but templates are surprisingly complicated to manage. They need to be predictable for all 1Password apps and consistency is key there. Could we design a system that would, for example, allow your e-mail to show in the list when it's a text or e-mail filed but not if it's a password field? Probably, but if mistakes were made in that implementation and a password-type field were displaying in plain text in the item list, that would be (for lack of more elegant terms) really gross. The simple implementation with any change causing the field to lose its special properties is far less error prone than anything more complicated. With data like what we all store in 1Password, I don't think the importance of predictable, well-behaved, and resilient to errors can be overstated, even if it sometimes means we don't make things quite as flexible or fancy as they could be.

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    Also, I'd suggest using tags and Favorites to organize things. I mean, you can add numbers to the beginning of item titles, but that doesn't necessarily scale well, as it seems you've discovered.

  • MrC
    MrC
    Volunteer Moderator

    @PellaAndroid

    About how many of these do you have?

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    I think I know what MrC has in mind. ;) But one option might be to put them in a separate vault specifically for that purpose -- like keeping DVDs and BluRays in different racks. Man, that's a bad metaphor. :lol:

  • MrC
    MrC
    Volunteer Moderator

    @PellaAndroid ,

    Your comment "as reported in at least three locations above" feels rather snarky, so I'm going to be a little defensive here. People are trying to help you, and the comment certainly reduces my motivation significantly.

    The number "18" was mentioned exactly 3 times. Your first mention of "18" was a minimum value, and you further softened that as an approximation based on some previous count you'd performed. The next two references to that number read more like using your initial guesstimate as the basis for illustrating subsequents point. They felt like examples. Nothing in what you've written indicates how many conversions from one record type to another you ultimately need to perform. Hence my question.

    I was trying to assess if a customized converter would have helped you, but if you only have 18 records, it's not worth anyone's time. Creating and copying email addresses for 18 records takes less time than you've spent in this thread alone.

This discussion has been closed.