I’m on the Bitwarden Family Plan with 4 users and 2 collections on the family vault. For testing purposes, I created a 3rd organization called “Testing” to safely test vault imports without affecting the main account.
I successfully imported my private vault -including TOTP codes into the “Testing” organization without any issues. However, when I try to import the exported family vault, I receive the following error:
“This organization can only have a maximum of 2 collections.”
The strange part is that my family account has only 2 collections, so I’m not sure why this error occurs.
Has anyone faced this issue before? How do you check if the vault export of your family has succesfully worked?
Any help or insights would be greatly appreciated!
Most likely, this is because the collection structure defined in the Family Organization is being imported, and Bitwarden is attempting to add those collections to the “Testing” vault, which already includes at least one collection (“Default Collection”). Try deleting all collections (including the “Default Collection” from the “Testing” organization before you import your Family vault collections.
Thanks for the answer. I deleted the collection inside the Test Account. Now there is no colelction left. But when importing my family account I’m now getting this error:File contains unassigned items.
Thanks for the follow-up. I’m not sure why unassigned items wouldn’t just be imported into the “Unassigned” category in your test account. This is what I would suggest to try:
In your Family Organization, go to the Admin Console (in the Web Vault), navigate to Collections, and open the “Unassigned” category. Do you have any items there? If so, assign them to one of your two Family collections. Then re-export the Family Vault and try the import again.
Hm, I dont have any unassigned items in my family vault.
But I just found out that I have an unassigned folder in my collection. Clicking on it doesn’t show anything. Can I delete this Folder? Why as an admin I cannot manage this folder?
It is not a folder. What your screenshot shows is that when you list the collections defined for your Family Organization, there are two collections (“Shared XXXX” and “Shared YYYY”), as well as a pseudo-collection for unassigned items (items that have not been assigned to either “Shared XXXX” or “Shared YYYY”). The pseudo-collection “Unassigned” is not a real collection, which is why you cannot manage (or delete) the “Unassigned” collection (all you can really do is to move assign any unassigned items to one of the real collections).
At the very least, it should show an empty vault item list, with the text “There are no items to list”. If you do not even see this on the screen when you click on “Unassigned”, then you did not click the correct location.
What file format and export type have you been using when exporting your vault data? And when you import, are you making any selection under “Destination”?
The import issue that you are encountering is starting to sound like it could be a bug (although I can’t yet replicate it on my end). If you don’t mind experimenting, I would suggest exporting your Family Organization vault using the .CSV file format, then opening the file in a spreadsheet app, and checking if you have any items with an empty value in the first column (“collections”).
I’m exporting as .json (Encrypted), passowrd protected.
I can test later the csv export and investigate like you described.
My use case is to back up my vaults, including our family’s, every six months onto a USB drive and test it for emergencies. The backup file must be password-protected and accessible without relying on my account.
When you import, there is a setting labeled “Destination”. Do you ever make any changes there?
In addition to looking for items that have an empty value in the “collections” column, try to import the .CSV export and check if you get the same error (“File contains unassigned items”).
Before importing, you need to purge the vault of your test account, and delete all collections of the test organization.
Update (Read First):
I may have found a source (or the source) of your problems. In the test account, are you importing from a Password Manager client (e.g., the Web Vault Password Manager, or a Bitwarden app or browser extension), or are you importing from within the Web Vault’s Admin Console? I believe the errors may be arising because you are not in the Admin Console when attempting to import the Family vault export into your test organization.
That’s some progress, perhaps, but you should be aware that the .CSV format discards a lot of information:
All Card items are completely omitted;
All Identity items are completely omitted;
All passkeys stored in your vault are lost;
All “URI Match Detection” customizations are lost;
All password histories are lost;
All custom fields of the types “hidden”, “linked”, or “boolean” are converted to simple text fields.
If you wish to continue troubleshooting, I would suggest that you now create a .JSON export of your Test organization (from the Admin Console), then purge all contents and delete all collections from your Test organization, and subsequently import the .JSON export you just made (importing from the Admin Console). Do you get errors now?
OK, so it worked to import a .JSON that was exported from the same (Test) organization. Now, please try to follow the exact same sequence of steps, but exporting a .JSON from the Family organization instead. Pay attention to all details (such as switching to the Admin Console for exporting and for importing), and deleting both items and collections from the Test organization before you attempt the import.
If this worked, then there was no bug, after all. And the importing organization only needs to delete its collections of it is a Free organization, and the vault that was exported contains collections.
