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Forum Discussion
Finding Almost Duplicates
Hello All, I support 1Password in our company of mostly Mac computers. (new to it myself, though) We have a user on a Macbook Air who imported passwords three times over the last year. (I'll give hi...
1P_Dave
Moderator
ModeratorHello ChuckPass! 👋
Thanks for the questions! If the duplicate items are exactly the same and in the same vault then you can also use 1Password's Watchtower tool to clean them up:
- Open and unlock 1Password for Mac.
- Click on Watchtower in the sidebar.
- Click on Show Items under Items with duplicates.
However, as you mentioned, this only applies to exact duplicates and items that were imported by your user three different times with different dates and metadata wouldn't match here.
Unfortunately, there isn't an easy way to resolve a situation where a user imported items three different times and may have been updating those items randomly over the last year. If this had been caught right away then I would have suggested removing all of the items from 1Password and re-importing them from the other password manager but that isn't an option now since the user has been updating the items in 1Password for a year. The best way to address the issue would be to choose one set of the items (based on the Imported tag) and move those items to a new vault. Then go through the items one by one, making sure that the item in the new vault has all of the information needed before deleting the other duplicates.
I'm sorry that I don't have a better option to share. I've filed a feature request based on your suggestions with our team internally so that they can look into enhancements to the import and duplicate detector in the future. I did have one question: did the user say why they imported the items three different times? Were they having trouble locating an item?
-Dave
PB-52078475
1P_Dave Thank you, Dave. I appreciate the quick response. Also, filing the feature request.
Is there a reason why we couldn't export all of the items and use Excel or something to de-dupe? Then import them again?
The first time seems to have been when he first got 1Password. Not sure on the second. The third is when we were starting to enforce the usage, forgetting that he'd done it twice before.
Chuck
- 1P_Dave
Thank you for sharing those additional details. In general, I advise against exporting your passwords and opening them in another app like Excel since that will remove your sensitive login credentials from the protected and secure environment of 1Password and leave them in plaintext.
It also increases the risk of inadvertently having your operating system, or an app like Excel, sync your passwords in plaintext to the cloud.
-Dave
Hello 1P_Dave ,
Thank you again for the responses. The automated system (I think) reminded me that I had not marked this as a solution. I can mark it if it's needed. It's not a solution, but it is the answer.
You were great in responding quickly and completely. I'm just traumatized by how much tedious work I have to do on this guy's computer. :-)
