✅ Import into organization's collection

It would be nice to be able to import entries directly into a specific collection.

Use Case: Credentials related to specific clients and teams are organized in a collection. When migrating from a different password manager a password file might need to be imported directly into a specific collection. Since many Entries are named similar but come from different sources, importing all files and then assigning them afterwards is tididious or even impossible.

Therefore: Importing all entries of a file and assigning them to a specific collection would be useful.

3 Likes

I second this. Especially because there is no option to move multiple entries into a collection.
When migrating from another PWmanager it’s very troublesome to open/move one entry after the other (I have 500+ entries to move).

(I wonder there are not more people asking for this option).

2 Likes

I worked around this missing feature by exporting the old keepass database as xml and transformed it using excel to export it as bitwarden csv. The Bitwarden csv allows you to specify collections to which an entry belongs.

But there is a caveat: The import does not check whether a collection already exists and creates new collections for each imported csv file.

How did you do that Tobias? :slight_smile:

I exported the KeePass database as xml and used Excel’s Power Query feature to import it into a sheet. I created a second sheet to convert the entries to a table that could be exported in a csv that bitwarden could understand. It required some cross references.

Unfortunately I cannot share my excel files and don’t have time to create a step by step guide. In hindsight, I wish I had written a script that does not require excel instead.

Here is what the Power Query Editor used as a configuration. The configuration depends on how you organized your KeePass folders and entries. Just to give you an idea:

let
    Source = Xml.Tables(File.Contents("C:\PATH\TO\KeePass-export.xml")),
    Table1 = Source{1}[Table],
    Table0 = Table1{0}[Table],
    #"Changed Type" = Table.TransformColumnTypes(Table0,{{"UUID", type text}, {"Name", type text}, {"Notes", type text}, {"IconID", Int64.Type}, {"IsExpanded", type logical}, {"DefaultAutoTypeSequence", type text}, {"EnableAutoType", type text}, {"EnableSearching", type text}, {"LastTopVisibleEntry", type text}}),
    Group1 = #"Changed Type"{0}[Group],
    #"Changed Type1" = Table.TransformColumnTypes(Group1,{{"UUID", type text}, {"Name", type text}, {"Notes", type text}, {"IconID", Int64.Type}, {"IsExpanded", type logical}, {"DefaultAutoTypeSequence", type text}, {"EnableAutoType", type logical}, {"EnableSearching", type logical}, {"LastTopVisibleEntry", type text}}),
    #"Expanded Entry" = Table.ExpandTableColumn(#"Changed Type1", "Entry", {"UUID", "IconID", "ForegroundColor", "BackgroundColor", "OverrideURL", "Tags", "Times", "String", "AutoType", "History"}, {"Entry.UUID", "Entry.IconID", "Entry.ForegroundColor", "Entry.BackgroundColor", "Entry.OverrideURL", "Entry.Tags", "Entry.Times", "Entry.String", "Entry.AutoType", "Entry.History"}),
    #"Expanded Entry.String" = Table.ExpandTableColumn(#"Expanded Entry", "Entry.String", {"Key", "Value"}, {"Entry.String.Key", "Entry.String.Value"}),
    #"Expanded Entry.String.Value" = Table.ExpandTableColumn(#"Expanded Entry.String", "Entry.String.Value", {"Element:Text", "Attribute:ProtectInMemory"}, {"Entry.String.Value.Element:Text", "Entry.String.Value.Attribute:ProtectInMemory"})
in
    #"Expanded Entry.String.Value"

This feature would be incredibly useful. I seem to be having very similar issues when attempting to bulk import records to my company’s organization. I’ve used an export of our existing data to ensure the format is correct for each of the CSV and JSON options. However…

  1. When using CSV import (which uses collection names) the collection names are duplicated with every import.
  2. When using the JSON format (which uses collection IDs - far better idea) the collection IDs are ignored.
2 Likes

Wow! That’s terrible. Just minutes ago I purchased a Family Organization and immediately wish I had chosen to self host.

I’m shocked this isn’t a feature - it just didn’t occur to me to check if this was possible.

2 Likes

Agreed.

The really annoying part is that it looks like you can do this by:

  1. Select multiple items by clicking their checkbox
  2. From the multi-select menu, choose “Move Selected to Organization”

But when I do this, I get the warning:

You have selected 4 item(s). 0 item(s) can be moved to an organization, 4 cannot.

And the Save button is disabled.

Aaagh!

1 Like

Any plans to fix this in the near future?

We need to import a large number of logins. Our organization users shall have different access. Some shall have access to all logins, some to just a few, etc. We can solve this with the collection and groups features, but when it is not possible to import into a collection, it is a real showstopper for us.
Hope this feature will be implemented soon.

It should also be possible to move multiple items to a collection. That would also make it a lot easier.

Hey @j0n is this an enterprise account? The integration team can also assist with scripts to assist in this progress in the meantime, you can connect here.

We are currently within the 7 day enterprise trail and are evaluating bitwarden. Is it really possible, that this issue/bug has been existing since at least Dec '21 (see S2inVT’s answer) and still isn’t fixed? Do I really have to do this with additional scripts instead of being able to do it through the backend through it’s dedicated function?

Not sure if we are comfortable with going through with our enterprise purchase if this is the case…

And actually to me it seems more like a bug instead of a feature request, so it should be treated like that.

You can connect directly with the official Bitwarden support team here, who can assist with importing.

The team is also working to implement the bulk move functionality but I don’t have an ETA today.

Additional resources

Also note, that if an administrator imports items into the individual vault, you can multi-select items and move to specific collection from there.

1 Like

Thank’s for the workaround, it actually works, which furthermore shows that this is a bug that needs to be fixed instead of a feature being implemented. Or at least put it in the docu as a workaround or something…

Nontheless, thank you for the quick response!

1 Like

Great feedback and thanks for your patience!

I want to be able to export selected passwords, not the entire vault, as well as import selected passwords into the vault. This feature would make my life easier.
Another feature I would like to see is to be able to reset the vault passwords, so if the feature above is not possible to make happen, then this reset vault and be able to import the entire record with new added passwords from other vaults would also make very practical

This is blocking me from being able to migrate to bitwarden. In both 1password and bitwarden I have accounts that are designed to work for a family. In 1password I have my personal vault, a second vault only I have access to for organizational reasons (I would not consider this an organization vault), and two shared vaults. I need to import the items from each into bitwarden while not intermixing them. The personal vault I have gotten to work, but my investigation and this thread imply that there is no way for me to take the other three and effectively import them. Importing and sorting after the fact is a total non-starter due to the volume of things I’d have to sort through - it would be easier to simply recreate everything from scratch… though that doesn’t sound practical either.

Thanks for the detailed info! Just to clarify, is 1Password spitting out single or multiple exports in this case? Have you already checked out the Condition a Bitwarden .csv or .json | Bitwarden Help & Support doc which allows for bulk edit of csv file? I also created a post here Select Multiple entries and applicable actions - #27 which may be helpful.

It sounds like you successfully imported items into your individual vault and are now looking to have several shared collections in the organization vault with different permissions/access?

I look forward to hearing additional details and you can also contact the official support anytime at Get in Touch | Bitwarden if additional assistance is required.

My first attempts at this were with the new 1password 8 and its monolithic export of an account. I deleted everything that pulled in as it was a giant mess. I switched back to 1password 7 so I could selectively export items so each import is for a specific 1password vault. They were exported in .1pif format. I have indeed looked at those articles but have not tried them yet.

For what its worth, so far I have only been trying to import from the web interface - if this problem is solvable using the CLI then I am happy to go that route as a work around. Longer term, not being able to import items directly into the intended destination seems like a critical missing feature to me.