Best system for family accounts/vaults

The question is: what's the best way to do this??? I've read this discussion from your forum and found it reasonably informative but I'm still not sure where to start.. Am I creating a new vault? If so, is it a "secondary vault" for my spouse? And how do I control if it's secondary or not?
Can you explain the options for how to do this and their relative benefits/features so I know the best choice for our family?

@ruthbmorrison: I understand your confusion. There is no "best way"! It really depends on how you'd like things to be setup.

To be clear, 1Password for Windows has no concept of 'secondary vaults'. It works with whichever vault you have open at the time. However, you can easily switch between multiple vaults there. So

Related support question - Before I've even broached this task, I noticed already that there appear to be multiple vaults already in my account but I'll confess that I don't know the origin of some of them. I really only use 1 (that I'm aware), but don't know what these others are, how they were created, or why I'd use them. If possible, I'd prefer to delete them just to keep things simple/organized. When I click the 1password icon within the program, it drops down to give me options for vaults to work in and I'm seeing 4. As described above: I don't know where 3 out of the 4 came from. HALP?

Only you can answer the question of the vaults' origin, unfortunately. After all, you can create as many vaults as you like! Now, if all of your data is in the one you've been using, I think that's the one you'll want to sick with. But you can always switch to the others to see what's in them. Of course, you'll need to know the Master Password. ;)

One thing I will say though is that the vault menu is just a 'recent' list. I'f you've moved your vault(s) around over time, you may simply have the same one listed in multiple locations — locations which may no longer be valid.

Personally, I have a...hmm...well, a personal vault of my own, and then another that I share with my wife (along with others used primarily for testing). Of course, this is really a matter of personal preference, and the primary/secondary status may not make any difference to you, and is a distinction which is only made in 1Password for Mac and iOS.

What isn't clear is what devices your husband will be using or how you have sync setup currently, but I can give you an example. You could install Dropbox on your husband's computer, install 1Password, and then when he opens 1Password it will find the vault(s) in Dropbox. At that point, he'll need to choose which one he wants as his primary: a personal vault for himself, or one he uses to share data with you. Or perhaps you'll be sharing all vaults, in which case I'd say choose the one used most frequently as the primary. If his main computer is a PC though, it doesn't matter. Just open each vault individually as needed.

Hopefully this gives you a bit of helpful insight. Be sure to let me know if you have any questions! :)

Assume he'll need to have his own dropbox account, is that right? And then would his dropbox facilitate syncing for whichever vaults he has access to (as in - has master passwords for)? (He's using a windows PC and an ios iPhone)

@ruthbmorrison: It's entirely up to you. If the two of you are happy sharing a Dropbox account that's quite alright, so long as you don't need to keep that data separate for either personal or business reasons.

But it's also very easy to share a folder (such as your 1Password vault) between Dropbox accounts, so that kind of setup isn't a problem either.

So how can I get rid of them (from the 1password program as well as from my other devices and dropbox)?

There isn't a way for 1Password to delete vaults for you, but doing so yourself is simple: first and foremost identify the vault you want to keep, so you don't delete it by mistake. Open 1Password for Windows, verify that you're viewing the vault you want to continue using, and then go to File > Preferences > General and note the path listed there. Then try switching to other vaults in File > Reopen 1Password Vault. I suspect that some or all of these will give an error saying it 'does not exist'. That's fine. If you find any that do open though, those are the ones you'll need to delete in Windows File Explorer if you don't want them, so make a note of their location in order to do so. And if you're like me and it bothers you to have that list populated with vaults that no longer exists, let me know and I'll send you a registry file to clear it. But it may not matter to you if you only ever have the one vault opened.

would his dropbox facilitate syncing so that the next time I go to log in, I get those updated credentials?

Yep! You'll both need to install the app from the Dropbox website, and share the vault between your accounts (see above — probably from yours to his), but then any changes will be sync'd between the two of you.

In the event that one or both of us want to have logins that are truly private (as it sounds like you do), we'd just create a new vault with a new masterpassword that we don't share with our spouse.

Precisely! But I' not sure I would even put that fine a point on it: it may just be simpler to only share items as needed, rather than trying to figure out which ones you don't want to share. That will make the 'shared' vault a bit less cluttered and more manageable. My wife has access to everything but my work vault, and I know that causes some confusion from time to time. So it's something to consider from the beginning. I wish I had! :lol:

How am I doing? I mostly want to know if this plan will be technically sound, keep our data simple and organized, and take full advantage of 1password's functionality across all our devices. Anything else I should consider to do that?

I think that sounds like a great plan! Having 3 vaults total seems perfectly reasonable: one shared and two personal. I only wish I had a single personal vault. :lol:

Now, as you're implementing your strategy, don't hesitate to ask any questions that arise. Cheers :)

You said: "Try switching to other vaults in File > Reopen 1Password Vault. I suspect that some or all of these will give an error saying it 'does not exist'. That's fine." - So I did this and indeed one of the vaults listed produced this error message. The interesting thing is that after getting that error message, I now no longer see that vault listed in the drop-down menu. It just disappeared. This SEEMS like a good result but I wanted to verify if I can't/shouldn't still locate this erroneous vault and delete it.

@ruthbmorrison: Perfect! 1Password won't keep a record of a nonexistent vault, so no worries there.

I looked in my windows file explorer in the folder where my primary vault lives and I couldn't find this erroneous one lurking there. Nor is it in my dropbox. So maybe problem solved? But what explains why this vault was showing up in my dropdown to begin with?

This is really just a 'recent files' list, so it's populated with vaults you've opened previously in 1Password. I often have multiples of the same vault listed, because I opened it in one location and then opened it again after moving it.

-- You said: "If you find any that do open though, those are the ones you'll need to delete in Windows File Explorer if you don't want them, so make a note of their location in order to do so." The problem is, when I selected this mysterious 2nd vault from the dropdown, it prompted me to give a master password (so no "does not exist" error message) but I don't know any master password for this 2nd vault because... I don't remember creating it. Maybe this is from the first day I downloaded the software and created this random vault that I now don't use but it's odd that none of my main secure passwords that I know are working in this random 2nd vault. So anyway - I can't follow your advice to conclusion because since I can't log in to this 2nd vault, I can't find the file path for it to go delete it and it's not living in the place where my primary vault lives. C'est une mystoire!

I would just try some passwords you might have used. Another option is to hang onto it in case something jogs your memory. Or if you're certain it isn't something you need, you can just delete it. Cheers! :)