Please Add Folders [We use tags for 1Password.com service, no folders coming.]

Jarek
Jarek
Community Member
edited April 2023 in 1Password 7 for Windows

I warmly welcome
I am writing to you this message because from today (unfortunately have not used the latest version of the program) started to use the latest version of 1Password 6, which has some shortcomings, but it is better than the previous version. If that was the opportunity that you have added tags instead of folders just as it did in version 4, it would be fantastic. Or adding options that eg. Instead of the tags are visible folders. I miss that option in the latest version.

Best Regards,
Jarek


1Password Version: 6.3
Extension Version: 4.3
OS Version: Win 10
Sync Type: 1password

Comments

  • Hi @Jarek,

    Thanks for writing in.

    There is a known issue where if you open the local vaults in 1Password 6, the folders structure are not converted to tags on the fly. It does work if you import them as 1PIF into an 1Password.com account but we will fix the issue with direct opening of the local vaults in a future update.

    Folders are slowly being phased out of 1Password completely in the near future with tags taking its place. Folders have already been removed from 1Password.com service as well. Tags and folders are essentially the same thing with the exception of the items can be tagged multiple times.

    However, that isn't to say we wouldn't expand on tags in the future, like nested tags or smart folders based on tags to provide you with additional organization structure to the tags. We're just starting with basic tags support first, make sure we got this properly handled on all platforms before we proceed.

  • Jarek
    Jarek
    Community Member

    @MikeT

    Thank you for the information, just missing my folders in this new version because the older version I had everything nicely arranged in folders and in this latest version is all in one and me a little disorganize. I'll try to re-import all passwords to the page we'll see how it comes out.

  • Hi guys,

    @dahanbn,

    Please provide batch tag management soon.

    It is coming but we don't have a timeframe.

    @Jarek,

    I had everything nicely arranged in folders and in this latest version is all in one and me a little disorganize.

    Do you mean nested folders? In that case, we don't support it, we only support a flat list at the moment but nested smart folders (or tags) is a possibility.

  • Jarek
    Jarek
    Community Member

    @MikeT

    I had everything nicely arranged in folders and in this latest version is all in one and me a little disorganize.

    This is when it comes to smart folders is how you can do it. Can only be made, I will present the folders that I had, version 4.

  • Thanks for the clarification. That nested style of organization is not supported yet for 1Password.com service, it is something we'll look into for the future. For now, you can assign two tags to the same item and when we expand the search features in 1Password, you could create a search based on these two tags to save it as a smart folder. So, parent folder is all items with internet tag excluding any other tags, anime is a sub folder for all items with Internet + anime, and so on.

  • Jarek
    Jarek
    Community Member

    @MikeT
    Exactly the point. It will be possible in the future, something to add. Or if we're talking about smart folders, I would ask for information on how you can do something like that. And yet I have one question, please inform us in how quickly you can delete tags.

    Best Regards,
    Jarek

  • Hi @Jarek,

    ..please inform us in how quickly you can delete tags.

    In the Windows version, you can't bulk-edit the tags yet. It is coming in a future update to let you rename, delete, reassign tags on the sidebar.

    If you have other 1Password apps, you can do it there. If not, you have to select the tag, edit all items to remove the tag before it is deleted.

  • Jarek
    Jarek
    Community Member

    Oh I understand it then wait for the new version. :)

    Thanks You @MikeT for info. :)

    Best Regards,
    Jarek

  • You're welcome!

  • wizcraker
    wizcraker
    Community Member

    Wow this is a major drawback to 1Password 6 subscription. It is nice that the vaults can be shared without using some cloud storage service but the lack of nested management is a pain when there are hundreds of passwords in different categories.

    I've never actually understood why a company would choose to go 9 steps backwards and adopt a flat style system for organization like the non nested tags system in 1Password over a nested solution.

    I'm not actually surprised though as the Mac version of 1Password was always lacking in the nested folder power features that Windows 1Password had. This over simplification flat style user interface seems to be a fad with developers which I hope will die sooner than later. It is bad UX for power users. It may be fine for those people that never open 1Password and only use it for Websites. For power users that use it to store passwords for servers or devices that do not allow for auto type and submit this flat style is a difficult to work with.

    As a long time 1Password customer from version 3 I would suggest a GUI to have basic and advanced work spaces. For everyone that needs just a password vault for their Websites keep the basic UI work space. Then have an option to have advanced features enabled like nested folders/tags for power users.

    The current tag system is a complete nightmare. Just look at the screenshot below from 1Password 4 to 1Password 6 and tell us power users how this new flat style is better.

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    Wow this is a major drawback to 1Password 6 subscription. It is nice that the vaults can be shared without using some cloud storage service but the lack of nested management is a pain when there are hundreds of passwords in different categories.

    @wizcraker: I hear you. The tough thing is we can't have our cake and eat it too. You mention how much you enjoy being able to easily share data securely. This is vastly improved over what we had before, to the point where it's used by many more people who would have never done so otherwise, and for those of us who were comfortable sharing vaults between Dropbox accounts and managing sync for each of them individually on multiple devices this is just so much less of a headache.

    You're probably wondering what that has to do with folders, but syncing folders sucks. If 1Password.com were an online-only thing, it would be less of a problem, but when we're talking about teams where dozens (or hundreds) of people are accessing items in the same vault and making changes, often offline, what happens to the folder structure when everyone's changes make it to the server, and multiple people have re-organized the folder structure? It ain't pretty, I can tell you that. To many people, this is almost as bad as data loss, and that just isn't acceptable. So eliminating folders means users don't have to worry about this, and the server doesn't have to make a choice that will ultimately be wrong for at least one user.

    I've never actually understood why a company would choose to go 9 steps backwards and adopt a flat style system for organization like the non nested tags system in 1Password over a nested solution.

    The thing is, folders are just as "flat" as tags in principle. A single database contains all of this, so in a sense it's just UI. And it's old, inflexible UI. There just isn't anywhere else we can go with folders, and they're limited in many, many ways. Tags, on the other hand, are both more flexible in practice, and more importantly there's a lot of room to iterate to make the UI better, so they can be even more useful to all of us. Where folders fall flat is that they are mutually exclusive with regard to items contained in them. This is not the case with tags.

    I'm not actually surprised though as the Mac version of 1Password was always lacking in the nested folder power features that Windows 1Password had. This over simplification flat style user interface seems to be a fad with developers which I hope will die sooner than later. It is bad UX for power users. It may be fine for those people that never open 1Password and only use it for Websites. For power users that use it to store passwords for servers or devices that do not allow for auto type and submit this flat style is a difficult to work with.

    I'm not sure what you're talking about. I used to use nested folders in 1Password for Mac. I also think you're conflating a "flat" visual style with "flat" hierarchy. These are not the same thing. The first is a matter of subjective superficial taste, while the latter is a functional difference. Let's not confuse the two.

    And I'm not sure where Auto-Type relates to this, but that's a feature we'd like to add in the future version of the new 1Password 6 Windows desktop app.

    As a long time 1Password customer from version 3 I would suggest a GUI to have basic and advanced work spaces. For everyone that needs just a password vault for their Websites keep the basic UI work space. Then have an option to have advanced features enabled like nested folders/tags for power users.

    No. That increases complexity not only for users, but also with development and testing, which can lead to more bugs. We're going to continue to design 1Password so that it helps the most people be more secure by making it more convenient to do so, not segregate different user "classes" and give them inconsistent, unequal tools from each other.

    The current tag system is a complete nightmare. Just look at the screenshot below from 1Password 4 to 1Password 6 and tell us power users how this new flat style is better.

    "Better" is subjective. I can tell you all day about all of the ways tags are better functionally, but given that your idea of "better" is predicated on a specific workflow you're accustomed to, you'll say the same about folders. I think it would be more productive if you'd let us know the specific uses that tags do not serve for you now so that we can incorporate that into the improvements we make going forward. From your screenshot, it appears that simply displaying the "tag/tag" pairs visually as hierarchical would solve the problem for you. For example,

    Support Sites
    \ Acision
    \ Calix

    versus

    Support Sites\Acision
    Support Sites\Calix

    And UI wise, it sounds like you'd prefer these to be represented with expandable +/- toggles. Hopefully this illustrates that the differences aren't so vast as they might appear at first glance, and that there are opportunities for us to build on this in the future as well. If you can give other specific examples, we can also try to take them into account as we continue to improve the new app and service. Cheers! :)

  • Manaburner
    Manaburner
    Community Member

    To be honest, I was a "folder maniac" (no offense ;) ) too. But today I think it's, at least in my case, a lot faster to use the search field to look for an item than drilling down into a folder structure. This is not only limited to 1Password, I do this also on my iPhone (239 installed apps cough)
    Of course there may be situations, where search doesn't help, because you can't remember the item's name but you know that you have filed it under Onlinestores\Something\Something.
    But again, for me, tags would be absolutely sufficient in this case too.

    However, I like to keep my tags more general and simple, like "Onlinestores", "Gaming", etc. and not "Onlinestores\Amazon", "Onlinestores\AmazonUK".
    I avoid nesting, because IMHO it adds a lot of complexity and needs more mouse clicks to have nesting when you just have one or two items per folder. It may have sated my inner Mr. Monk to have a lot of folders with subfolders and more below in the past, but today I don't do that anymore.

    In your example, you have a total of 15 "Support sites". I would file them under the general label "Support Sites" and you would see with one click all the support sites and choose the right one. Sure, there's always the one special case where this approach doesn't fit. But then I would give it a separate label and that's it.

    Just my 2 Cents.

    P.S.
    I currently use folders only in 1Password 4 for Windows and only because it's painfully slow updating the other views. But that's the past. :)

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    To be honest, I was a "folder maniac" (no offense ;) ) too. But today I think it's, at least in my case, a lot faster to use the search field to look for an item than drilling down into a folder structure. This is not only limited to 1Password, I do this also on my iPhone (239 installed apps cough)

    @Manaburner: Yeah, I don't know anyone like that... :lol:

    Of course there may be situations, where search doesn't help, because you can't remember the item's name but you know that you have filed it under Onlinestores\Something\Something. But again, for me, tags would be absolutely sufficient in this case too.

    I used to have this problem a lot. I used to give things nondescript/useless names and therefore had trouble finding things. Using tags and notes to add keywords and general metadata to my items to reflect the thing I searched for initially (which failed) has made it infinitely easier for me to get what I need more quickly.

    However, I like to keep my tags more general and simple, like "Onlinestores", "Gaming", etc. and not "Onlinestores\Amazon", "Onlinestores\AmazonUK". I avoid nesting, because IMHO it adds a lot of complexity and needs more mouse clicks to have nesting when you just have one or two items per folder. It may have sated my inner Mr. Monk to have a lot of folders with subfolders and more below in the past, but today I don't do that anymore.

    It's a jungle out there. Tags are more flexible, but we recognize that we haven't raised them to their full potential yet. Definitely looking forward to utilizing them more in the future.

    In your example, you have a total of 15 "Support sites". I would file them under the general label "Support Sites" and you would see with one click all the support sites and choose the right one. Sure, there's always the one special case where this approach doesn't fit. But then I would give it a separate label and that's it. Just my 2 Cents.

    I think in some cases sheer volume can become an issue. Using the same example, if you've got 150 "Support sites", that's a less useful search/list on its own. Using more tags and other metadata can help, but we should too with better UI and more powerful search.

    P.S. I currently use folders only in 1Password 4 for Windows and only because it's painfully slow updating the other views. But that's the past. :)

    Yeah... :sweat:

    1Password 4 is a solid app and has served us well, but I'm glad that we've got a lot more room to grow with 1Password 6. Cheers! :blush:

  • Hey @dahanbn,

    Just in case you haven't read my response in the stable thread, it's something we're working on as we consider it an important feature in 1Password.

    Cheers!

This discussion has been closed.