Encrypted Exports for Backups

[Friedel12]

Every now and then, I want to make a backup. Unfortunately, the description on the help page about exporting is too complicated for the average person (and me ) to understand.

Additionally, rotating your account’s encryption key will render an account restricted export impossible to decrypt. If you rotate your account encryption key, replace any old files with new ones that use the new encryption key

I have a family account and would like to export all Valts in encrypted form from time to time so that I can import them back into my account if necessary. It would be great if you could explain this in simple terms in the help section or here. Dankeschön.

[grb]

Do you prefer to do the export using Bitwarden’s browser extension, or the Desktop app, or the Web Vault?

Here are the instructions for the browser extension:

Go to  Settings > Vault Options > Export Vault . This will open a page titled Export Vault, which looks like this:

 

In the Export From field, first select “My Vault” (as shown in the screenshot above).

In the File Format field, select “.json (Encrypted)”. Doing so will reveal another option, titled Export Type (as shown in the screenshot below):

 

IMPORTANT: Change the selection for the Export Type option to “Password Protected”. Doing so will reveal two additional input fields (File Password and Confirm File Password), but due to the restricted height of the browser extension window, you must scroll down using the scrollbar before you see these fields, which look as follows:

 

Enter a file password in the File Password field — or preferably, press the
button to generate a random password (e.g., a passphrase consisting of 5 or more random words — you can configure this in the  Generator before you start the export process). IMPORTANT: Write down this export file password somewhere safe (e.g., an emergency sheet), so that you don’t lose it. It is also a good idea to store this password in your vault, but you must keep at least one copy outside your vault.

If you manually entered a file password in Step , then you must re-enter the file password in the Confirm File Password field.

Click Export Vault. This will present a pop-up where you are prompted to enter your master password, as shown below:

 

Enter your Bitwarden master password at the prompt (not the file password from Step !)

Click Export Vault in the pop-up, which will cause the export file to be saved (with a name like bitwarden_encrypted_export_20251203123456.json). Depending on how your browser has been configured, the file will either be saved automatically in your Windows Downloads folder, or you may be prompted to specify the desired location for saving the file.

 

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The above will only export your personal vault (“My Vault”). To export the personal vaults of the other Family plan members, you will need to log in to their accounts and repeat the the process.

You will also need to separately export all shared collections in the Organization vault. The best way to do this is from the Admin Console (in the Web Vault). However, if you have "Manage Collection permissions to all collections in the Organization, then you can also repeat the above steps with the Organization vault selected in Step .

As a final caveat, the above procedure will not export any file attachments. There is currently no method to export file attachments in an encrypted format. If you have file attachments in the Organization vault or in any of the family members’ individual vaults, let me know — I can provide some additional pointers.