When do you use tags and when do you use additional vaults?
I was inspired by another discussion asking you awesome folks how you handle your security questions and it made me curious about something else too, so I would love to hear some of your opinions about this.
As you all probably know, 1Password uses tags so you can have a simple way to categorize and filter your data. Tags are great and way more flexible than a traditional folder structure, so this is probably already enough for most people and can get the job done perfectly well.
However I was wondering: when do you stop using tags and decide to put certain items in a separate vault instead? The first simple example that comes to mind is one where you might want to use a separate "Work" vault for your professional logins. However, this could technically also be achieved by using a "work" tag :)
So I am curious to see how you deal with this type of situation: when do you feel it's a good idea for you to stop using tags and to start putting some items in a separate vault instead?
Comments
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Although I have not done so (yet) it strikes me that a separate vault is a good use for old, outdated items you may wish to archive but don't yet wish to delete. If you do that those items don't then clutter the principal vault.
What I personally use a separate vault for (using the stand-alone app and not the subscription version) is for items which in the principal vault are tagged Shared and which are copied into a separate shared vault synchronised by Dropbox with my partner's machine. That separates what needs to be synchronised but also enables to me have a saved smart folder showing, in my principal vault, what items tagged Shared have been updated within the past 30 days (so I don't forget to copy them to the Shared vault). Although it sounds a little complicated it's actually very simple and works really well.
Stephen
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Thank you for sharing this @Stephen_C!
I use an Archive vault myself, that's a perfect example of where it would make perfect sense to use an additional vault rather than tags.
And kudos for your smart and shared folder implementation, that's pretty smart, I love it ;)
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@DanielP -
I posed a similar question the other day about when to add a new vault. In my case, I had three vaults: Personal, C&A, and Shared. Personal held zero items, C&A held everything, and Shared had just a few items such as Netflix.
I use tags on all my items. Some have one tag while others have two or even three. An example might be a credit card will have the tags Credit Card and Financial, whereas Fidelity will only have Financial.
I have 31 logins to accounts that have the tag Job Hunting. While I'm not necessarily looking for a job, I do have these sites around as a way to stay active.
I decided yesterday to put those 31 logins into my Personal vault for one simple reason: I didn't want to clog up C&A with items that my wife doesn't use. As I said in my response to @Frank and @oliverdunk yesterday, I'm the geek who gets a kick out of using 1PW, but my wife just wants it for practical purposes. The easier I can make it for her, the better. So, moving everything with the Job Hunting tag out of our combined vault seemed to make the most sense.
As for stopping the use of tags, I personally won't do that. It's quite possible that my wife might want or need my job hunting stuff one day and then I'll move it back into our combined vault. If I do that, I don't want to then have to go in and create tags for all those logins. It just seems easier to add them as I go along. If they're not needed, fine, but if I want them in the future I'll have saved time doing it now.
I hope this helps you figure out what will work best for you.
Chip
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Thanks so much for chiming in on this @RCMjr :)
I use tags on all my items. Some have one tag while others have two or even three. An example might be a credit card will have the tags Credit Card and Financial, whereas Fidelity will only have Financial.
This is actually some food for thought for me. Right now, I only use tags on certain items, but not on all of them, while I now see that it could make sense to tag all of them one way or another. Thanks for the pointer ;)
I decided yesterday to put those 31 logins into my Personal vault for one simple reason: I didn't want to clog up C&A with items that my wife doesn't use.
This is another great reason to separate items in different vaults, 100% agreed!
I'm the geek who gets a kick out of using 1PW
Oh man, me too! High five! :D
As for stopping the use of tags, I personally won't do that.
Oh no no, I wasn't suggesting anyone do that, quite the contrary! Tags are awesome and I love them, I was just curious to find out how are users were using them together with multiple vaults ;)
I'm loving the feedback so far. 1Password is flexible enough to allow folks to configure it the way they best see fit, I always love to see how other people are using these features.
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