How to purge the archive?

SteBae

Hi,
I signed up for the new individual plan yesterday. During the process I made a silly mistake and synced my existing 1P4 data set multiple times. I managed to clean this up. However, I now have many data entries in the archive (after I emptied the trash). How can I purge those from the archive?

Thanks.

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1Password Version: Not Provided
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: Not Provided
Sync Type: Not Provided
Referrer: kb:undefined, kb-search:empty archive

khad

Hi @SteBae,

Thanks for asking about this.

At this time there is not a way to empty the archive. When you empty the trash, items will be moved to the archive (completely out of sight in the apps) for 1 year. At that point, they will be automatically removed from the archive.

I will let the developers know you would like a way to manually clear the list of archived items. :+1:

If you or anyone else reading this is curious, you can learn more about viewing and restoring previous versions of items in 1Password accounts.

If we can be of further assistance, please let us know. We are always here to help!

SteBae

Hi khad,

thanks for the clarification. I think the current implementation of the archive is not intuitive. First I cannot purge files from it and second it automatically clears the files after one year. That might lead to some surprises. Anyway, I appreciate you passing along my request.

Take care,
Stefan

Jacob

@SteBae I see what you mean. I've just forwarded your feedback to our development team. Thanks for letting us know what you're looking for. :)

ref: B5-1906

skippingrock

I really want/need/require to have a way to secure delete an archived version.

It is nice to have a way to undelete accidentally deleted items, but when I'm sure that I want something delete; especially something very sensitive, I want to ensure that it is gone… gone… forever with no chance of getting it back.

I should be able to have complete control over how things in my account are secured.
If God forbid my account was ever compromised, I do not want anyone to be able to recover items that are not meant to ever be recovered. This also goes for items that are accidentally or purposely moved to a shared vault. Shared vaults are only as secure as the weakest shared account. Since other shared members are also able to undelete archived versions, this puts these sensitive items at further risk of access.

Please see to it that a per-item secure delete/shred/destroy ability is added soon; otherwise I may have to reconsider my subscription and the migration to have my data stored on the 1Password servers. I really need the family organizers to be able to have this ability.

thanks,
skipR

Jacob

@skippingrock Thanks for the detailed feedback! I see your point about control over account security, and I think this does fall into that a bit but it also falls into the category of data management. I appreciate you bringing it up. :)

skippingrock

What about having the option of choosing how long an archived version is kept?

For me, and I'm sure many others, one year is just too long.
I'd like to at least see the option of 1, 3, and 6 months in addition to the year option to expunge the data; but really would like to have even more granularity than that, like 1 week, 1 day or even 1 hour.

What about if I chose to delete an entire vault? Is that going to still be recoverable?

Jacob

I could see that being added at some point. The more likely feature, however, is the main one in this thread.

What about if I chose to delete an entire vault? Is that going to still be recoverable?

No, it will be unrecoverable once you delete it.

skippingrock

So if there is some data in a vault that has been deleted and I want to make sure that it is gone for good, I could create a new vault, move everything to the new vault and then delete the old vault?

Would there be any problems that might arise for me in doing this? What about linked files? When moving an item that has a link to a file, does the link point to the location on the original vault or would it now point to the file on the new vault?

I'm just trying to figure out a temporary solution until the main requested feature is implemented.

SteBae

Unfortunately the data I want to purge for good is in the archive of my personal fault. Apparently I cannot delete the personal fault (in order to purge the archive). So I tried restoring a few items and move them to a temporary vault (to be deleted after all items have been moved out of the archive of the personal fault). However, the move process also puts every item back into the archive of my personal vault!! So I cannot see a way/workaround to empty it.

I really hope you'll be adding the feature of emptying the archive soon. I see it as a safety concern.

pervel

Add another vote for purging. Add all kinds of warnings, bells and whistles before purging an item completely. But is it extremely important that you can delete information that you may have added by mistake or that you have some other reason to get rid of. Those reasons could be anything from personal to legal. You must be able to fully delete data.

Jacob

@skippingrock Thanks for checking before you do that. Links between items will be lost if you move them between vaults. Both items will move over, the reference just won't go with them so you'll need to link them back up. That's the only issue with creating a new vault to move things over. Hope that helps you make the right decision. :) SteBae does make a good point in the next comment: You acn't delete your Personal vault if that's what you had in mind.

I appreciate you all taking the time to share this feedback, and I'll be sure to share it with the team. :+1:

ry_345

I also think there should be a way to permanently delete an item. I think it is a very important feature for security minded users.

I thought I found a workaround by clearing the username/password fields of an item and then resaving the item. But there is a history for all previous versions of that item! This also seems like something that should be the choice of the user to be deletable. I get that the average computer user may not want to ever delete something, but to others, like me, it's scary that I don't have that kind of control over my items.

Jacob

Thanks for the feedback. Previously used passwords is a feature designed to make sure you don't lose any previous passwords, in case the website you changed them on failed to save the change and you generated a new one.

SteBae

I understand the rationale behind this. However I need to have full control over my data. Right now I don't since I cannot purge the archive.

Will the archive be purged when I delete my account?

ry_345

@Jacob, regardless, that workaround was just that, a workaround. The main issue is still deleting the item all together so the "past passwords" becomes a non issue if the main feature of this post is implemented.

Jacob

I was just chatting with the team about this yesterday. It's definitely something on our priority list. :) There are a lot of details to sort out about when to actually delete things so people don't accidentally remove their data forever, and we've got some good solutions to those problems in mind. Excited to share things with you soon.

SteBae

Thank you @Jacob I'm happy to hear that there will be a way to purge the archive soon. And I don't have issues with making it fail safe (for example checking multiple boxes and enter some text etc.).

Jacob

:+1: :)

skippingrock

Thx, for me to be practical I would need to have the ability to do it right away. I can't feel comfortable about them hanging around, even for a few days.
I do like the idea of having the previous passwords, but I would be able to delete them on the Mac. I would just delete the section. But on iOS I don't seem to have as much control of each entry.
What about a self destruction feature? 8-)

Jacob

Oh boy, self destruction could be interesting. :lol: We've been talking about the archive purging for a little while now and have some great ideas to solve it for you guys. Excited to share them when they're ready!

ry_345

Thanks for the update @Jacob!

Jacob

No problem. :)

SteBae

Is there any update on this ? I just checked with my account and I couldn't find any way to purge the archive.

Roman

Hi @SteBae - At this point there aren't any news on this. As Jacob said: we have great ideas for this and will be happy to share them when they're ready. Thanks for letting us know that this is important to you! :)

sflomenb

I'd like to add my two cents here. I don't need a way to clear all items from the archive, rather, I'd like a way to remove a specific item from the archive.

Roman

@sflomenb - Thanks for letting us know this is important to you. I appreciate that a subset of that request would do for you. We'll keep this in mind for when we work on our own ideas regarding the purging of archived items. :)

skippingrock

when can we have this feature??

john_m

@skippingrock - no news to report publicly yet! We're still working on improving our service, and roll changes very regularly. You might want to keep an eye on our change-log for the service here: https://app-updates.agilebits.com/product_history/B5

SteBae

Not having full control over my data (and that includes purging the archive) doesn't work for me. I have therefore decided to let my account expire and to move on to a different password manager.

Jacob

I totally hear where you're coming from — I like to feel in control of my data as well, and when I think about us not having this, I wonder what's going on over in development. But then I chat with them, and I find out it's a pretty big project. After all, giving you the ability to permanently delete things from your account is a really powerful feature, and we want to make sure it's done right, tested, and deployed to our test server so we can test it some more. There are a lot of things that come into play. I wish it was just a matter of changing a 0 to a 1 but alas, it's not.

I'm sorry this isn't ready yet. When we do have it, I'll check in with you and you can get back to using 1Password if you'd like. :) Hope you find a great solution in the meantime!