Good evening. Partial-match search seems to be disabled since 1Password 8. This looks like forward-match. I'm Japanese and Japanese is a language without the ability to separate words (Chinese too). So, forward-match search will not match in most cases. I wonder if English-language users will have the following problems; Input the word "macos9" to the Notes field, and search "os9" => No results found Input the words "castlevania and metroidvania" to the Notes field, and search "vania" => No results found Input serial number "SN09873667" to the Notes field, and search "09873667" => No results found These issues don't happen on iOS, 1Password7, and the Web version's full-text search. I think the full-text search results will be unreliable unless they are partial matches. I hope this can be taken into consideration 1Password Version: 8.7.0-90 Extension Version: Not Provided OS Version: Windows 10

Hey ticksgt, thanks for reaching out. I certainly understand where you're coming from as searching in 1Password 8 doesn't work the same way it did in 1Password 7. There are some technical reasons for this, as one of our developers, Rob, explains here: https://1password.community/discussion/comment/635627/#Comment_635627 With that said, we are still working on making search work well for everyone and have an internal issue raised for this. We greatly appreciate you sharing your use case and I'll be sure to add your comments to the internal issue. Ali IDEA-I-527

ticksgt yes, this is also a significant issue in English and other languages. You gave perfect examples. I’d like to learn about the lack of word separation and additional impact for Japanese. I find the technical explanation for the change in behavior to be interesting but unsatisfying. It’s a distraction - storing strings as UTF8 doesn’t prevent partial marching, the choice of search engine does.

@"ali.hazime" you are working on this problem since the first early access version of 1PW8... sadly without any visible progress. I'm really loosing patience and confidence in AgileBits. Substring search is an essential and widely accepted search feature. 1PW8 finds only a fraction of what all previous versions were able to find. Even worse it doesn't even show directly what it has found. It's using a filtered overlay window instead of just showing all results inline. One has to use CMD+Enter to see all results. You've added Filter/Find as a secondary search approach that works much better but that is still not on par with 1PW7. My workflow is now: using Find/Filter first, using Search second, giving up and returning to 1PW7. Please bring back th 1PW7 search inlcuding its UI and algorithm... at least as an option.

viswiz Reverting to the way 1Password 7 worked isn't in the cards. We'll continue to evaluate how we can move search forward, but I can say with some certainty if the line in the sand for you is having it work exactly as it did in v7 then that isn't where we're headed. Ben

1P_Ben @"ali.hazime" Thanks for replying. I saw an article similar to this one. Windows Search does not have the ability to do a full-text search of UTF-8 text https://ascii-jp.translate.goog/elem/000/004/058/4058837/?_x_tr_hl=ja&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_sl=ja&_x_tr_tl=en I hope this gives you some insight.

Please support partial-match search function like 1Password 7

16 Replies

1P_PeterG
Community Manager
3 years ago
Hi folks! A further update:

substring search matching has now made it to the latest Production build of 1Password. To take advantage of this functionality, update to version 8.9.4 or newer, and you will be good to go.

(And of course, for folks in this thread who have already been on Desktop Betas for a little while, you should have had access to this feature already 👍)
1P_Tommy
Moderator
4 years ago
It's great to be able to share this with you all. Please put it to the test. I know you will. 😉
volts
Super Contributor
4 years ago
Agreed, thank you. I'm very excited to spend more time with this.

Also it's amazing that you're all sharing this with the forum. Thank you!
ticksgt
Occasional Contributor
4 years ago
AliH1P
Thank you for the great news!!
I will try it from now.
AliH1P
1Password Team
4 years ago
Hey ticksgt, I have some exciting news to share regarding substring searching. We've made some changes to the search functionality in our latest Nightly release (80901013). Substring or partial word search matching has been implemented:

Additionally, if you search for a partial string from the notes section of an item and choose "Show all matching items" from the search results, it will yield all results containing that substring:

If you're interested in checking out these changes, you can navigate to Settings > Advanced and set the release channel to Nightly.

Let me know your thoughts or if you have any questions!

Ali
1P_PeterG
Community Manager
4 years ago
Hi viswiz and volts, thanks for the detailed and specific feedback here. While I won't be able to answer every question on the design or implementation decisions for the current search, I do want you to know that we're taking your thoughts (and those of other community members) into consideration and that we appreciate the substance of what you're offering here. Should we have more news on this front, I'll be happy to provide updates. 👍
volts
Super Contributor
4 years ago
Really well said viswiz.

I'm guessing that "tokenized full-text search" implies it has to search for each of the components, but the end result sure is confusing.
viswiz
Super Contributor
4 years ago
1P_Ben the current search has two major problems: algorithm/implementation and usability.

The implementation side suffers from problems that are related to the added unicode support as you and others told me. But finding less items than before is only part of the problem. Even worse it now splits search terms into separate words but instead of an "AND" operator it now uses "OR" that finds all kind of non related items.

The other problem is usability. Instead of start searching while typing and showing all results inline (within the item column) we now get a prefiltered list in a separate window/overlay. In order to get all results one has to press a shortcut. A regression reported by several users. But in contrast to the unicode problems mentioned above I still haven't found a single explanation for this change. I even searched the forums for complaints about previous 1PW's versions search that mighet explain the change but haven't found anyone complaining about the old UI. Could you please tell me why the UI/usability was completly changed?

If you can't/won't change the UI could you please add an option to replace the search by the already implemented but quite hidden filter?
ticksgt
Occasional Contributor
4 years ago
I noticed a strange phenomenon after trying the search several times.
Here are some examples.

Create an item with the title name "192.168.20.30"

Search with the keyword "192.168.30.20"

The message [1 result for "192.168.30.20"] is displayed and show "192.168.20.30"

Titile "090-1234-5678" -> Search "090-5678-1234" => 1 result for "090-5678-1234"
Titile "iPhone12 (192.168.20.30)" -> Search "192.168.iPhone.30" => 1 result for "192.168.iPhone.30"
Titile "helloworld deivid@gmail.com" -> Search "hell@gmail.com" => 1 result for "hell@gmail.com"

I assume the following symbols function as delimiters.
!"'()-|\;:,.?_/@][

So search "192.168.30.20" is meaning "20", "30", "168", "192" and "hell@gmail.com" is meaning "com", "gmail", "hell".
Users think they are searching by email address or IP address, but there seems to be a gap with the actual behavior.
1P_Ben
1Password Team
4 years ago

But it does point out that Search Is Hard, and Text Character Encoding Is Hard. :-)

💯

Ben