I absolutely agree. I also migrated from LastPass.
Once I received a response here that Bitwarden doesn’t care about features on LastPass, they don’t even know these.
Hey all, just to reiterate my comments above, the team is actively following feedback on folders/collections and improvements are coming 
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@BUser If you are referring to this response from me in March, then you have grossly mischaracterized it:
- I am just another Bitwarden customer, and my comments in the forum do not represent Bitwarden in any way.
- I never said I didn’t care about Lastpass features.
- My reply was specifically about one particular Lastpass feature that you had mentioned (“Identities”), to allow me to actually provide a substantive response to your question about whether it is possible to achieve equivalent functionality in Bitwarden.
Even if you are referring to some other exchange on the forum (which I doubt, having reviewed your post history), I can guarantee you that it was not a response from any Bitwarden employee.
I understand it means I don’t have multiple copies, however, my point is the Bitwarden Password Vault makes it look like I do by having my personal vault and organization vault all on the left navigation bar in separate sections. This made me think that these were completely separate folders/storage and thus, separate copies. I now understand that’s not the case, but it shouldn’t be this confusing. It should put a login into one vault (organization) or another (personal). If I want it in the organization vault it shouldn’t be appearing in my personal vault as well. It really makes no sense and based on other threads and responses in this thread, I’m not the only one that thinks this.
I’m not following your reasoning. The individual vault (“My Vault”) and the organization vault are in fact separate storage areas. An item stored in the organization vault is not also stored in the personal vault (and vice versa).
It does do this. Perhaps you are confused by the fact that when logged in to an app or browser extension using, you are able to simultaneously access all items in your personal vault and all items in the organization vault to which you have been granted access.
In that case, edit the Collection permissions so that your personal account does not have view access to the Collection(s) that hold the item in question.
All logins in the Organization Vault are also put into the Personal Vault. If I or someone else in my family put a new login into the Organization, it automatically shows up in my personal vault. You described it as by design earlier in this thread so each user could organize things however they want. I’m not confused. It’s “tagged” as belonging to an organization and not “me” but it still appears there. Removing access to Organization passwords by removing view for my account would be pointless, as then there’s no reason to have Bitwarden Family plan since I can’t see any of the shared passwords.
@exorr What do you consider your “Personal Vault”?
E.g. in the browser extension, if you set the “Vault” filter to “My vault” (i.e. what I would consider the “Personal Vault”), I think you shouldn’t see any organizational vault items:
PS:
On the (Android) mobile app, the Vault filter is also at the top:
What you are saying is factually incorrect (when applying the standard interpretation of the word “vault” as used by Bitwarden). But allowing for the fact that you may be using a different definition of the words, I would guess that you are saying that when you are using the Bitwarden password manager while logged in to your (personal) account, you can automatically see shared items that have been stored in the organization vault (side-by-side with private items that are stored in your individual vault). The confusing part (to me) is that it seems this is something that you would prefer not to happen.
I was describing the distinction between folders (a section within a user’s personal vault) and collections (a set of access control rules for shared items), not any form of vault item duplication.
So now I’m really not clear on what you want. Do you want to see the shared passwords or not?
Restating what @Nail1684 said with just a bit more detail…
In this picture, if the filtering menus are not visible click the three lines to the right of the search field. Then if you select:
- Vault, you see entries from all vaults to which you are logged in.
- My vault, you see entries only from your personal vault.
- Test123, you see entries only from your family vault.
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And @exorr to put it all “the other way round” now: if you don’t use the “Vault” filter (and putting aside other filters for a moment) then of course you will see all items your Bitwarden account has access (permission) to - all items of your individual vault (My vault) and all items from all organizations and collections you have access to.
(and Test123 was only a test organization I use)
I cancelled by Family membership before the trial expired so no longer can get a screenshot from my vault of exactly what I was referring to, but I understand what Bitwarden is doing at this point. When viewing ”All Vaults” in the Password Vault, which is what I was referring to when I would say “My Personal Vault”, it shows a folder structure with Logins and such, it then had another section below that for Collections with another folder structure with many of the same logins. This is what I was trying to say by “everything appearing twice”. If I have “All Vaults” highlighted, all items should be consolidated into a single browsable list, however Bitwarden has two folder structures all visible at the same time on the left, which can each have the “same login” in it. I stole a screenshot from Bitwarden’s introduction to the web UI guide to help explain this.
If I select the “Finances” folder under the “Folders” collapsible icon it can show me items in my Personal Vault and my Organization Vault, both in that same folder. Some tagged “me” showing it’s a personal item, while others tagged “organization” showing it’s a shared item.
If I select the “Product” folder under the “Collections” collapsible icon it can show me the same login that appears in my “Finances” folder above it.
I hope that explains what I mean by “it appears twice”. Basically viewing All Items I would expect each item to appear once, however, it appears in both the “Folders” structure and the “Collections” structure IF it’s a shared item.
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OK, thanks for explaining your perspective. But the clickable options in the “Filters” list are filters, not folders. Each option describes an attribute that a given item may or may not have:
- Belongs to your individual vault (vs. an organization vault)
- Is a Favorite (vs. not)
- Is a Login item (vs. is a Card/Identity/Note item)
- Is assigned to Folder X (vs. Folder Y, Folder Z, no folder, or Trash folder)
- Has access control settings specified by Collection A (vs. Collection B, Collection C, etc.)
Here’s the thing: one vault item can possess multiple attributes. For example, if a vault item is a Login item, is a Favorite, and is assigned to Folder X, then it will show up in three different “sections” (i.e., 3 different filter selections: “Favorites”, “Login”, and “Folder X”). This does not mean that there are 3 separate copies of the item.
If you have marked an item as a favorite, and that item is also assigned to the Finances folder, would you expect the item to only appear in the “Favorites” section, or to only appear in the “Finances” section, or both?
The filters that appear in the “Collections” section are not folders. They are collections, which are groups of items that share a common set of access control settings (e.g., items in the “Sales” collection may only be viewable by employees in the Sales Department).
If you instead choose to use the collections as a way of organizing or categorizing shared items, then it would be best to not also assign those items to folders (especially if you don’t fully understand the distinctions between a folder and a collection, or the expected behavior of the vault filter options).
Like I said, I understand what’s its doing now. I started this thread when I didn’t.
The confusion for me, when I first started using the Family plan is that the icons to the left of the Collections sure look like a folder to me. So because of that, I assumed they were folders, just folders inside my Collections. One of the reasons I assumed this is because coming from LastPass, items are placed in a SINGLE folder structure. Folders in that structure can be shared with other members of the family (organization in Bitwarden terms) but they are still shown in the same folder structure. They just say “Shared” in front of them.
I wrongly assumed that moving a login from my “Folders” structure to my “Collections” structure, was ACTUALLY MOVING THE ITEM because I wrongly assumed the structure under collections were folders. However, I understand all its doing is giving permissions to the item.
You don’t need to explain what it’s doing anymore, I get it now. I still think its horribly implemented and I’m not going to try and train my family on using something I personally feel is confusing and poorly implemented when we are coming from LastPass, which is literally “drag and drop” to share or not to share.
Bitwarden can disagree with me and keep the current organization structure, that’s fine, but I am not the only one with confusion like this, just google it and look at other posts in these forums for evidence of that.
To clarify, this would actually move the item (unless you were creating a clone, or unless the item already belonged to the organization).
Regardless, I’m not trying to say that there is no room for improvement in the UI design for organization vaults (and evidently, such improvements are already in the works), only that trying to interpret the existing functionality based on a paradigm borrowed from a competing product is not going to be helpful.
Considering this reddit user, from 5 years ago, has a lot of the same confusions as me I’m not holding my breathe that changes are coming lol…
Mickets response here is really where I land now. I get it, but trying to train my wife and kids on it?…nope.
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