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Merge with history issue

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JimS
2011-12-05
2014-02-08
  • JimS

    JimS - 2011-12-05

    I have been using passwordsafe for some time and up to this point it has been
    great. I keep a copy on two different computers and can add entries on either
    one. Before I had password history turned on this usually only found a couple
    differences - usually passwords that I updated on one system but not the
    other. The number was small enough I could easily go through manually and
    delete the older "duplicate". But I turned on history because I sometimes need
    the older ones. Now all the entries don't match and going through them all is
    a long process. Is there a way to automatically use the entry that was updated
    most recently or ignore the history field if that's the only change? There are
    some advanced options for merge/sync but I didn't find any documentation of
    the details.

     
  • DrK

    DrK - 2011-12-05

    Currently, there is no method to do what you wish.

    However, instead of Merging, you could compare both databases and, using the
    Advanced field selection criteria, exclude the password history (or include
    everything and then decide based on the differences).

    Within the Compare results dialog, you can edit the entry in the current
    database (or view if it is read-only) and view the entry in the other
    database. You can also copy from the other database to the current database
    directly, again if not read-only - .

    The Compare report has a list of the differences found (missing entries or
    differences in entries in both databases).

    David

     
  • JimS

    JimS - 2011-12-08

    I decided to just not have history but ran into a few issues in trying to go
    back to none. On the main options selection you can only supply a minimum of 1
    history to keep for existing histories - There does not appear to be a way to
    apply "none" to existing entries. Most of my entries had not been changed
    since I selected keeping history so they didn't have any (visible) history. I
    just selected none on the master options and tried a merge. For some reason
    the program sees a difference in history for almost all my entries even though
    I go into entries that have supposed history differences and find no history
    for the entry in either database. Apparently there is a nonvisible difference
    in history. I have tried this several times and double checked this. I am
    willing to accept the limitations of the program but this looks like a bug.

    Perhaps I can work around this by ignoring history field in advanced merge
    options but I tried a few things there and didn't see how to do it.

    At this point it seems I am reduced to exporting the databases and importing
    them to get "clean" databases. This seems easier than trying to manually sort
    through the entries and figure out what is what. I am certianly open to other
    things but what a pain... I hope someone can tell me I missed something
    somewhere...

     
  • DrK

    DrK - 2011-12-09

    A few points:

    1. Please raise a Feature Request to allow and extra option to delete all saved password history in existing entries in the "Manage password history of current entries" section of the Options Password History tab. Of course, once implemented, you will have to do this for both databases (and probably save them) before you do a merge

    2. There is no way to ignore Password History with the "Advanced Merge" options as I indicated earlier. Advanced filed selection options for Merge only allow you to limit the entries to merge based on whether a small number of character fields (Group, Title, User name, Notes and URL) do or do not contain a particular string.

    3. You may want to open a Bug Report relating to the issue of PWS thinking that Password History is different during Merge. If you can provide 2 test databases that fail to merge correctly due to this, then it will definitely help matters.

    David

     
  • Nameru-na

    Nameru-na - 2014-02-08

    How do you clean up a database that's already been peppered with duplicates due to Password Safe not considering the Password History being different doesn't make the entry a new entry. I now have hundreds of duplicates. How can I remove them without going one-by-one?

     

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