Search for archived items from a specific vault?

I finally decided to switch from using my "Defunct" vault for unneeded items I'm no longer ready to delete, to using the "Archive" feature introduced last year. So I archived 260 items from my Defunct vault, and then went to delete my Defunct vault. It was only then that I realized that "each separate vault has its own Archive and when you delete a vault you also delete all items in that vault's archive". So I cannot delete my Defunct vault without deleting those 260 items I just archived.

This fact is described in @Dave_1P's reply to this forum post. But it is not explained in the blog post introducing archives, nor in any help documentation that I could find.

@Dave_1P's recommendation in that forum post is to "move or copy your items to another vault, archive them in the destination vault", and only then could I delete my "Defunct" vault. The problem is, the 260 items that I just archived from my "Defunct" vault are now mixed in with 1000+ items in my Archive (presumably these items used to be in the Trash). There seems to be no way to restore just the 260 items, so that I can move them to another vault, then archive them, then delete my "Defunct" vault. I definitely do not want to restore all 1000 items, as this would clutter my vaults terribly!

So, my question is: How do I search for and restore just the 260 items that are in my Defunct vault's archive? If this is not possible, can it please be made possible? Better yet, can it be made obvious and easy to do?

But also I wonder: can this behavior be better explained, either in the original blog post or in the help documentation, so that others don't make this same mistake? That blog post made it seem that the new Archive could be a great replacement for the "vault named Archive" that many users create. The way I attempted to transition is, I believe, the most likely path a user might take. But actually the new Archive is distinctly NOT a vault, and the hint that it could be treated as one is what got me into this trouble.


1Password Version: 8.6.0
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: macOS 12.2.1

Comments

  • dgbeecher
    dgbeecher
    Community Member

    Hello again. I'm hoping for some guidance on this issue. How do I restore the 260 items I archived, without restoring all 1000 items in my archive? When I open the now-empty vault I see this message: "You have 260 archived items in this vault" and below that is a button to "View Archived Items". It would be great if this showed me just the 260 items, but it doesn't ... it shows me all 1000.

    Have I described the problem clearly enough? If not, please let me know. I'm in a bind and don't know how to fix it. Thanks.

  • dgbeecher
    dgbeecher
    Community Member

    Is this not the place to ask for support? Should I email instead?

  • Hey @dgbeecher:

    Thanks for asking, and I apologize for the delay in response here. This is definitely an area we can improve on, and I've brought it up for internal discussion. In the meantime assuming that you only have items you'd like to restore in a single Defunct vault, this process should get you going:

    1. Create a collection containing just your Defunct vault.
    2. Select your new collection, and choose Archive in the sidebar.
    3. Verify that the only items shown in Archive are now the items that were originally in your Defunct vault.
    4. Select all (⌘+A), right click > Move to the destination vault.

    This should put all of the items that were previously in the Archive of the Defunct vault, into the Archive of your intended vault. Let me know how you get on with that!

    Jack

  • dgbeecher
    dgbeecher
    Community Member
    edited February 2022

    Thanks for your reply, Jack! And sorry to rush you, I have just been worried that I was going to have to sort through 1000 previously-deleted items in order to find them, or else give them up for lost.

    Your instructions worked great, although for step 4 I selected "Restore" rather than "Move" to get them back into my Defunct vault. ("Move" was actually greyed-out, presumably because the items were still in my Defunct vault, just in its archive.) It is good to know Collections can be used in this manner.

    Three ideas to consider for your internal discussion about this issue, which I guess I already mentioned above:

    • Could the help documentation be improved to make it clear the "Archive" is not itself a vault but rather contains items you've archived from all your vaults?
    • Could the "View Archived Items" button that is shown within a vault filter the archive to show just that vault's archived items?
    • Could there be some sort of search criteria to show a specific vault's archived items, eg, "vault:defunct AND item:is-archived" ?

    Thanks again.

  • chmontgo
    chmontgo
    Community Member

    Thanks for the discussion / solutions provided here, it helped me too.

    I agree with @dgbeecher -- the workflow/communication around this behavior could use some improvement. My first instinct was to try some advanced search filtering as they suggested, but it doesn't seem like that exists.

    I also want to note that while the suggested workaround worked, I was actually able to select "Move..." as suggested (it wasn't greyed out in the Linux app). I probably should have known better though, because for a few minutes it appeared to me that my moved items were deleted, not moved:

    • The moved items (still left archived) appeared in "Recently Deleted"
    • The destination vault provided no indication whatsoever that there were any archived items living alongside the non-archived items

    I started writing up another thread describing my observations until I realized that they had actually been moved as I intended, but the only way to get to them was, again, following the original workaround of adding the "destination" vault to a new collection and finding those moved+archived items again in the collection's "Archive" view.

This discussion has been closed.