Husband & Wife .cvs file Importing & "Organiazation" Sharing

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1

I created an account for myself and imported all of our 644 items from Last Pass into Bitwarden.

I created an account for my wife.

I created an Organization and added my wife to it.

We will be sharing more of the 644 items than not! I’m seeking the best way to proceed:

  • I’m thinking that it may be easiest to edit the (644-item) .csv file in Excel; by creating 3 separate files:
  1. A .csv file with only my wife’s items.
  2. A .csv file with only my items.
  3. A .csv file of shared Items

  • Each of the 1st. two (2) .csv files could then be imported into out individual vaults; so far so good I believe (please correct me if otherwise).

  • The question is: how do I insert the 3rd., remaining (shared) .csv file into Bitwarden and where should I put it?

My initial thought is to place the shared items (.csv file) into our single Organization & its Collection. If you agree, what’s the easiest/best way to get the files into our Organization/Collection in bulk?

For our simple purposes, I don’t see a need for more than 1-collection.

Does this make sense &/or please correct or advise otherwise…Thanks!

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Instructions for how to import data into an Organization vault are available here:

If you will be conditioning your .csv file to make it match the format required for import in the “Bitwarden (csv)” format, then please be advised that the required column headers are slightly different from those used for importing individual vaults in the “Bitwarden (csv)” format (see instructions).

Alternatively, a simpler approach would be to use the unmodified .csv (with its original headers), and select “Lastpass (csv)” as the import format. If you use this approach, check if your exported .csv has a column labeled Grouping, and if so, whether that column contains more than 2 distinct values. This will create an error on import, as explained in this Help article (the error can be fixed by removing the Grouping column).

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I have previously imported my LastLass .csv file, without an incident, or problem. So, NO format matching is required.

My intent for manipulating the LastPass .csv file (within Excel), is to manually view each line-item and determine whether it should be:

  1. Mine
  2. My wife’s
  3. Shared.

Thereafter, I intend to create 3-separate .csv files. Doing this is needed, because presently, our entire 644-file database was combined and equally shared.

Now that we have separate Bitwarden accounts and an Organization, I’m looking for the easiest way to segregate what is:

  1. Mine
  2. My wife’s
  3. Shared.
    and getting that data – those 3 files – into BitWarden.

And then more importantly, I’m requesting the easiest way to add each of these (3) separate files into our Bitwarden vaults and Organization? Importing: 1) my file into my vault and 2) my wife’s file into her vault is straight forward and without concern. However, how do I get the 3rd. – shared – file (of passwords etc.) into our Organization and its Collection?

4

I had attempted to answer this in my previous comment. In particular, please refer to the detailed instructions in the first Help Center article that I had linked. If you need help interpreting the info from the Help documentation, please let me know, and I will do my best to walk you through it.

Please note that in Bitwarden’s Lastpass importer for Organization vaults, it evidently uses the value in the Grouping column to identify the collection to be used, so it may make sense to modify those values to match the name of your shared collection. Alternatively, if you only have a single value of Grouping, then you can leave it as is, and later do a bulk transfer of the imported items from the collection that was created on import (matching the name of your Grouping value) into the collection where you want the items stored.

5

First, thanks for all the help you’ve provided herein and elsewhere. Second, I apologize for not recognizing what was contained in the the article you referenced, in response to my Organization question. Additionally, your walking through offer is more than appreciated.

Bitwarden’s “Organization” and what one can do is daunting to a neophyte user. That’s made more so by our simplistic needs, compared to a business’ needs, with their many varied needs, organizations and users.

Lastly, as a new Bitwarden user, I’ve already opted for the premium plan for myself and intend to do likewise for my wife.

Cheers, -Mike

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You’re welcome, and thank you for the kind words.

Let me know if you need further assistance with the import or anything else.

Depending on your financial circumstances, you may want to consider the Family Plan, (which would double your subscription costs, from $20 to $40 per year). The benefit of doing so is that some of the Premium features that you and your wife can use in your individual vaults (e.g., the ability to generate TOTP codes using Bitwarden’s authenticator, or the ability to upload file attachments to your vault items) unfortunately will not be available for the shared items that are stored in your Organization vault — unless you switch from a free organization to a paid organization (such as the Family Plan).

If you do decide that that getting a Family Plan is what you want to do, you can contact support for help crediting your paid individual Premium plan fees towards the Family Plan subscription.

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The Grouping column in my LastPass .csv file, contained an entry (a folder name) of one of each of the dozens of folders that we had inserted our various passwords into. So, I deleted any values in the Grouping column and then Imported that file. Note: To no avail, I tried to import the LastPass .csv file that contained dozens of differing values in the Grouping (folder) column. But as you suggested, Bitwarden refused with an error message saying (to paraphrase) that there would be more than 2-collections.

So, I assumed Bitwarden’s import refusal, comported with your instructions; which by-the-way, prevented me from wondering what the heck was going on!? So, thanks for that heads-up! :slightly_smiling_face:

But I didn’t follow, when you said:

“…and later do a bulk transfer of the imported items from the collection that was created on import (matching the name of your Grouping value) into the collection where you want the items stored.”

I would prefer that the our shared organizational collection was segregated by folder, as our Bitwarden personal vaults now are. However, in order to do that, I’m surmising that for each folder/grouping name, I would have to create a Collection name. I would then have to go through the process of culling/moving each entry into the appropriate folder (i.e., collection).

So, another perhaps easier way, would be to purge the Bitwarden import that I’ve done. Then, select just one of my groupings & import all of its entries into the Organization. Would that automatically create a Collection named after the value in the grouping column?

Because I believe BitWarden said it could NOT import more than 2-collections, could I import 2-folders/groupings at a time & collections would be automatically created and named? Or would I have to create a folder for each collection. And import folder by folder into its namesake collection. Is 1 of these 2 methods, what you meant when you advised the following:

“bulk transfer of the imported items from the collection that was created on import (matching the name of your Grouping value) into the collection where you want the items stored.”?

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The 2-collection limitation is not an import limitation. If you are using a Free Organization, then the shared Organization items may be organized in at most two Collections. If you need more than two Collections, you should upgrade to a paid Family Plan, which doesn’t have any restrictions on the number of Collections.

However, please note that Collections exist primarily as a way of defining access permissions differently for different groups of shared items, not for organizing items by topic.

I may be wrong about this (because I don’t have experience doing this myself), but my understanding is that you can separately place shared items within folder that exist in your Individual vault, in a way that is completely independent of the Collections. For example, you may have an item that is stored in a shared Collection (e.g., Our Stuff), but when viewing your individual vault, you can keep the item in one of your folders (e.g., AudioPhool's Stuff), while your wife has the exact same item in a different folder (e.g., Wife's Stuff) when viewed from her vault.

I know of now way to accomplish such an arrangement automatically during the import process, though.

9

Ok then, more good information: “Collections exist primarily as a way of defining access permissions differently for different groups of shared items, not for organizing items by topic.”

I obviously didn’t understand that. Actually, I was hoping to find a suggested Organization structure/use for just 2-users. I searched herein and didn’t find anything specific.

Hopefully, the “understanding” provided in your second paragraph is correct, because your suggestion makes sense and would seem accurate.

10

It would be easy enough to test once you’ve created your first “collection”. Add an item to the collection, make sure that the item can be seen from the individual vaults in both your account and your wife’s account (i.e., that both users have “view” permissions), and then place the item in a folder under each account. If you’re able to place the item into differently named folders under each account, then you will have verified that what I said was accurate.

11

Thanks grp, I believe I have a setup that may work sans folders in the shared collection. The sharing situation is clearer, but still a bit foggy.

After your last post and prior to your suggestion, rather than trying to dump >600 passwords into the account(s), I played around with adding a couple 3 passwords and seeing what happend.

Is so doing, this was another case where I found one of your reminders fortunately helpful. That is, not only does one need to confirm a new user (which the need and more importantly its steps, are not intuitively simple); but also as you advised another step is needed: i.e., that both users (must) have “view” permissions!

After scanning the Internet, Bitwarden’s help section, youtube, this forum’s threads, I believe that a walk-through of setting-up a “simple” 2-person sharing situation, with screen shot examples before, during and after, is a real need that the Bitwarden folks should put in their to-do list.

I realize that Organizations/Collections and Folders were created for actual business Organizations. So, the complexity is understandable. But for a 2-person household, the whole sharing process is overly complex for something that should be so simple and I would imagine, done by a sizeable number of users.

The learning curve of the in’s and out’s of a new password manager and picking and choosing the right (for you and your risk vs security assessments) security options, are daunting enough, without sweating over setting up a 2-person sharing scenario.

As such, in trying to figure out how to handle 2-people sharing in Bitwarden via hours of searches, I found the following comments, for which I concur:

This is one way that LastPass made it much easier. You just create a folder, share that folder with them and from then on, anything dropped in that folder from either party is shared. It’s so simple and the UX is easy to understand.

Bitwarden makes all of that much harder where you have to create an organization and get your wife into that and then create a collection that’s not a folder and then put entries into the organization and also select the collection every time (or is it in the collection and select the org?) and all of this is way below the fold. Good luck figuring this out because the instructions aren’t clear either and if you google it, you won’t find it.

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Sounds like that would be a helpful resource for a common use-case. Tagging @sj-bitwarden (who is a Technical Training Manager and may be interested in this feedback).

In the meantime, have you seen the Bitwarden Learning Center? The following are a few relevant resources culled from there:

13

Thanks for the feedback! Yes, I will absolutely look into putting something together.

For your purposes @AudioPhool, it sounds like you might be best served with a Families plan as @grb alluded to earlier, so you can have as many Collections as you wish.

In a paid organization (Families or Business), Collections can serve the purposes of both organization structure and permissions for sharing. With a Families plan, you could absolutely import any Shared Folders from LastPass directly into Bitwarden. The primary difference in import is that for your Indivdual import (things just for you or just for your wife), each of you will use the import option available at Tools > Import data and things that you want to share will be imported through Organizations > Settings > Import data as this is the only import that can bring in and create Collections directly.

Another point of clarification is that in Bitwarden, Favorites and Folders are specific to the user currently logged in and cannot be shared, while Collections act as “Shared Folders” and will be the same in name/appearance for both you and your wife.

I hope this helps, but do let me know if you have any other questions!

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Yes @sj-bitwarden, thanks, your post helped.

Another point of clarification is that in Bitwarden, Favorites and Folders are specific to the user currently logged in and cannot be shared, while Collections act as “Shared Folders” and will be the same in name/appearance for both you and your wife.

Re. shared folders: there is a difference in knowing what will, or won’t work, verses one’s assumptions of what should work. Not knowing that shared folders wouldn’t work in a 2-person context, I was NOT so much needing their use, as I was in simply trying to get them to work! :roll_eyes:

Minus @grb’s helpful notice that our Lastpass folders (labeled with a grouping heading in Lastpass), wouldn’t be loaded in the import function, there is no way one would assume (and therefore) conclude that fact! The same goes for the use of folders within Bitwarden’s Organization>Collections use. Now that I know that folders won’t work in our shared context and that we don’t really need multiple collections, we’re good to go forward as we are, without them. :slightly_smiling_face:

This brings me to a very positive point about Bitwarden! :clap: Namely, I immediately noticed (vs Lastpass) how unbloated Bitwarden was and as such, how quick the search function was. :+1: Type a letter or two and you get what your seeking! In essence, this negates the need for folders for all except those unusual instances, when those of us with hundreds of passwords, just can’t seem to recall the name of what we assigned, for what we’re seeking.

The primary difference in import is that for your Indivdual import (things just for you or just for your wife), each of you will use the import option available at Tools > Import data and things that you want to share will be imported through Organizations > Settings > Import data as this is the only import that can bring in and create Collections directly.

I discovered (or should I say stumbled upon) this “primary difference”
early-on in my learning curve. After much research, some head scratching, trial and error and thankfully help from @grb, I finally came to understand what you advised above @sj-bitwarden. As such, it was the subtleties, intricacies and assumptions inherent in the sharing (organizational) process (for two people) that I found confounding.

But generally, as is with everything, once it’s all understood, it’s simple, isn’t it!?!

Predicting 100% of the many mistakes, assumptions and faux pas new users will have and make, then mitigating them all with a cohesive help and training scheme, defines the difficulty in designing help by someone with complete and full knowledge of a complex subject (like Bitwarden). Once it’s known and understood, it’s always simple.

Getting every new user (no matter their background or knowledge) from a blank-slate state, to simplicity, is the dilemma and the crux of understanding how training and help should be assembled, organized and presented. Towards that goal, the importance can’t be overstated of help being presented with graphics and screen shots as well as text (or in video form), .

Another point of clarification is that in Bitwarden, Favorites and Folders are specific to the user currently logged in and cannot be shared, while Collections act as “Shared Folders” and will be the same in name/appearance for both you and your wife.

Indeed sj-bitwarden, this is another fact that isn’t immediately apparent, but one would assume the opposite. Mentioning it here is one thing. But the compilation of such assumptions made by unknowing users, should be noted and then dispelled in the formal training that’s hopefully compiled just for 2-person users – i.e., search for a 2-person Bitwarden use scenario and voila, there it is!

In any case, thanks for the help and assistance sj-bitwarden. It would be an overstatement to say it has been fun learning the in’s and out’s of Bitwarden. But I have enjoyed the challenge! :slightly_smiling_face:

I should add that for the single user, Bitwarden is impressive in its simplicity! But once, more than one user is introduced to the process, things immediately get complicated and for an army of two (to coin a phrase), that isn’t anticipated, nor expected.

For an actual organizational structure with multiple users, departments and functions within those departments, complexity is obvious and therefore expected. Hence, via my learning curve, I can understand how difficult it is to address a two user organization, when the application was designed and marketed for so much more.

Thus, perhaps there is a better way to educate those of us with what should be a simple two-person sharing process. Taking a tidbits from our discussion in this thread, coupled with all of the other threads herein and found elsewhere on the Internet, should be a prime starting point for assembling charts, graphs, screen shots et al. and providing what Bitwarden can and (more importantly) can’t do for a two person “organization”.

But nevertheless sj-bitwarden, I appreciate Bitwarden for what it is, how it has been designed and how much help I have found from my previous single contact with Bitwarden’s Support and from the help I have received in this forum! Cheers, -Mike

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