Erasing unused accounts

[TT]

Is there a way to remove unused accounts from the address book and wallet? My
wallet's starting to get quite cluttered.

[MiningBuddy]

You can't remove the address's afaik, plus you wouldn't want to mistakenly have bitcoins sent to an address you later couldn't retrieve.

Starting a new wallet is the only thing I can think of.

I do wonder though, at what point in your address book should you be thinking of starting fresh. From a usability standpoint, forgetting improved anonymity by frequent changes etc.

[TT]

It makes sense that you don't trash old addresses in that you completely throw away your
private keys. But it makes a lot of sense to be able to transfer unused accounts somewhere else,
where you can still check up on them periodically but they don't clutter your wallet.

[Alex Beckenham]

Be vary wary of deleting any wallet data.

It's such a small file size, why not just archive it somewhere instead in case you realise you need it later?

[DullJack]

It makes sense that you don't trash old addresses in that you completely throw away your
private keys. But it makes a lot of sense to be able to transfer unused accounts somewhere else,
where you can still check up on them periodically but they don't clutter your wallet.

An 'Archived Addresses' tab would be nice to have. A typical non-techie user wouldn't want to, or necessarily know how to set up and transfer funds to a new wallet every now and then. It's also an unnecessary hassle. Sure it's not a huge deal to most of us current users, but if bitcoin is going to catch on with the masses, the client needs to be clean, feature-rich, intuitive, and it needs to make everything it does as simple and easy as possible.

[TT]

It might not be that horrible a thing for those who only intend to use the wallet from the GUI
and you're not doing any really serious business that requires rigorous accounting nor doing
any programmatic access to to the wallet. For the basic consumer, I agree that just having
tabs in the wallet would probably be sufficient. For those of us who intend to use the bitcoin
API to do serious business, it's a nightmare.

I'm looking to write some server software that involves automated payments and keeping
track of potentially tens of thousands  or more addresses and accounts. Without
a feature that allows you to move specific addresses to another wallet, it becomes a
colossal mess having to go through all the unused addresses ALL the time. In terms
of performance, security, and code/DB management issues, it really is a veritable
nightmare.