Feature Request: Search in Archives

Hi @mfisher911,

Thanks for letting us know this is something you'd like to see in 1Password 8, I've added you to our open feature request on the topic. No promises, but if you're keen on seeing what changes are upcoming, I recommend the 1Password for Mac Beta Release Notes.

Let me know if you have any questions or additional feedback. 🙂

ref: IDEA-I-929

Thanks, @andrew_l_1P !

Happy to help! 😊

Would also like to see an option to enable/disable (default) search in the archive

Hi @mopperle,

To confirm, something like a toggle so the default search in the 1Password app includes the archive when searching all items? I'd be interested to know more about your use case and how you use the archive if you're open to sharing, but I'll add this note to the tracker I mentioned earlier in the meantime.

Thanks for the feedback!

Hi Andrew, thanks for your interest.
About my use case: I have several hundred datasets (accounts, secure notes etc) stored. About 20-30% are datasets I would like to archive. Some of them are not needed anymore, but need to be stored for 2-3 years. After that time they will be deleted. Others are „sleeping“ and might be revoked one day or also deleted.
I tried to tag them, but that means that they are always visible. As they are not used for a long time, you often forget them, especially the sleeping datasets, which are in 90% accounts for websites. Before I open on such a website a new account erroneously, I would search for it in my datasets and therefore including the archive optional would be helpfull.

@mopperle

Thanks for the information here – we'll pass that on to the product team. In the meantime, from what you describe, could I suggest something to try? Instead of Archiving those items which are "sleeping", move them to a new vault which is just for those items. Then, create a Collection which doesn't include that vault.

☞ Use collections to create custom groups of vaults

Use that collection so that you only see the vaults with items that aren't "sleeping". When you do need to access one of those items, switch to that vault and you'll be able to search it.

If that works for you, then you'll be able to make that use case work today, rather than waiting for a new feature. Give it a try and let me know how you get on. I'll be here if you need further help. :)

I can see from another thread here that this subject has been discussed, and put on the feature request list, since at least August 2021.

I, like many others here, absolutely need to be able to use this feature.

I have recently come over from LastPass and brought all of my clients with me. I manage hundreds of data items for each client adding up to thousands of items. One of the arguments I used in our choice of 1Password, following our product comparisons, was the Archive functionality which would allow us to be able to move expired or replaced accounts elsewhere without having to export or delete them. I, unfortunately, did not go as far as to verify whether or not searching archived items was possible or apparently impossible as I didn't even imagine the possibility of an Archive system being created without search functionality.

The Archive vault rapidly becomes useless when it cannot be searched. Having to scroll through hundreds of entries to see if an item is in the vault, or not, in order to be able to find expired or replaced data items is already time consuming and frustrating. But not being able to search within those items to find particular terms in the Notes fields or elsewhere makes the Archive functionality useless.

I have gone so far as to create a vault "TEMP Archive" in to which I manually move all of the items from my Archive so I can search within that vault and then I manually re-archive them.

The ability to search the Archive vault, either individually by going in to the Archive vault and searching or, preferably, by using a toggle switch when searching (turned off by default) to search All Items and Archived Items together should be placed very high in the feature request list as quickly as possible.

Thank you for your consideration.

Hi @DerekErb,

Welcome to the 1Password Support Community and thanks for sharing your insight on this topic! I see your point and will share your experience here with our Product team.

In the meantime, I recommend exploring collections: Use collections to create custom groups of vaults

Using your current workaround, you could keep your "archived" items in a separate vault and use a collection to create a view exclusive to or excluding that particular vault. Depending on your needs, it may even be worthwhile to have multiple vaults for this purpose and store them under a larger archive collection.

Let me know if you give that a try and thanks again for your feedback. 🙂

ref: PB-30925971

Hi, I'd like to voice another vote for this. Having an archive is great. But having no way to search that archive, simply makes it a black hole. As such, it is really no better than simply deleting items. When you have a dozen archive items, then sure, your "archive" feature works. But if you have 100 (or more), then it serves no purpose other than hiding (effectively deleting) items.

I think of it this way. If I know I am never going to use an item again, then I will delete it. But there are other items that I really don't need now, and maybe I'll never need them, BUT I need to know that I can find them if I have to. That is what an archive is for. The fundamental key to an archive is being able to find things!!!

Another improvement to archive functionality: I try hard to tag my items intelligently to help me organize. If I look at items in the archive, I see that the tags remain. But there is no way to display them organized by tag. It would be nice to see the archive organized by tag.

I tried out the "collections" suggestion. It is better than your existing archive functionality. It is a way to get searching AND tags. But it is less seamless than I would like. I created an "Archive" vault and moved my archive items there. Then I created a "Default" collection that doesn't include the Archive vault and an Archive collection that only contains the Archive vault. This works well for normally hiding archive items while still giving me a way to search and view them organized. Maybe 1pw should consider implementing "archive" as nothing more than a special collection. So when I archive an item, it simply moves it to a special vault, and that vault is not searched or seen unless I specifically ask for it.

Thanks

Dave