What are Categories used for ???

JosieNurseTN

I think perhaps re-framing how you are thinking about 1Password might help.

Your account contains one or more vaults, each vault has specific permissions.

A vault is a single record storage container where you store a 1Password record (like a filing box where you store a paper document).

A category is an empty record with predefined fields (like an unfilled paper form that you'd fill in). Some categories are special. All records belong to one single category, period, and the category is selected and fixed when you create the record.

A tag is simply a way to mark a record for easier discover for you (like a colored sticky note on a document in your filing box).

When you create a new record, you select the category. You can pick the one most useful to you.

But as mentioned above, there are a few special purpose categories: Login, Credit Card, and Identity. These are special because they are used for web-page form-filling to help simplify entering the data these contain (e.g. login information, credit card data, and identity information - this type of data entry is common for web sites).

All the other categories are simply data holders, with predefined placeholder labels / fields. Many of these are largely historic, in that's the way password managers were designed 10 to 15 years ago. Predefined categories are common in the password manager space, and some password managers allow you to customize their stock categories. But in the end, they are nothing more than predefined data placeholders that you use when you create a new record (to put in some vault, perhaps with one or more tags).

1Password does not decide for you which category to use (with the exception of Login records, which the browser extension may offer to create when you fill in a website, if the URL doesn't already exist in some Login record, or Passwords if you generate a password). You select a category when you create a record.

You might decide to just use Secure Notes for everything, customizing the record with the sections and fields that you want. It's entirely up to you.

You don't need to show Categories in the sidebar. That's there for your convenience (e.g. if you want to quickly show a list of only your Secure Notes). Think of this those sidebar items as filters - they select what data is presented to you in the list to the right of the sidebar.

Hopefully this helps.

Oh Brother. I thought I was making prograss but you have blown my mind with your description of Catagories.

Soooo every item entered in my 1 Password database is going to show up in Catagories regardless of whether they are in a Vault or have a Tag or not ???

I wasn't planning on using Tags at all because it would eliminate me having to do some kind of search to group all the identified Tags to find what I want. THis is crazy to me.
If my items are in Vaults, I can go to the exact Vault and see everything I have put there in one click.

If I remove Catagories from the side bar and don't even see them in that list, how does the program "decide" what kind of template I need for a newly added entry. And, it seems to me that I have been able to add any info I might need to an entry if there is not already a place for it.

I really have to think about this. Its driving me nuts.

JosieNurseTN Categories are the names of the templates your items were created from. They are names of the blueprints that define the default fields within an item. If you create a new item, you choose a category and get a default set of fields to fill. If you imported from Lastpass, your existing items were apparently assigned some category, probably according to how they were created in the first place in Lastpass. The vast majority of items will probably be the "Login" category, the template that combines a username, password and URL for website login.

17 vaults seem a bit excessive. It seems you mistake vaults with what tags are made for. Vaults are not meant as organizing or managing scope, not meant as folders where you add all similar items.

Instead, they are meant for access control and access separation. There is real functionality attached to them.

You use vaults for family accounts if you need to share items between some but not all members.

And you use vaults on a standalone account if you have (for example) a vault full of business accounts you use while working and another vault full of private accounts you use out of work only. To avoid private accounts show up while doing business work and vice versa, you create a collection for work and add only your work related vault. And you create a collection for out of work and add only the vault with private accounts. Then you switch between work and out of work collection if you switch between work and out of work.

If you're travelling and want some high security items not be stored on a mobile device, you can put them into their own vault and not sync that vault to that device or use this vault with travel mode.

But usually, you put all items in only one vault and for sorting and organizing use tags. In settings, activate tag display in the sidebar, optionally disable category display, and you're perfectly organized. You can create nested tags by using the / character within the tag name.

Since you can add as many tags to an item as you want, so an item will show up within every tag you add to it, this will also solve your reused password issue, since you only keep one item and not duplicate it into multiple vaults.