‘Export Vault’ seems so simple, but I have spent hours trying to find the exported .csv file. Can anyone tell me where they are?
Keith M
How about your common download folder? Perhaps sort it by date.
Did you use the export function in the desktop app, a browser or the CLI tool?
In any case, you should be able to use the file manager of your OS to look for *.csv, if you didn’t choose csv as extension you can narrow the search by looking for files created in the time window.
Thank you for your response. By the way, Windows 10 V20H2, up to date, browser Vivaldi, Bitwarden v 1.26.5.
I did the ‘export’ both on the web extension (Chrome based) and on the desktop app. I searched for .csv both through ‘This PC’ and through Boot C. No results.
This morning I searched again for *.csv and date modified yesterday, still no results.
By the way, one of the ‘help’ pages suggests that on the desktop app there would be an opportunity to set filename and location, but on my version, all that came up was the ‘select file format’ followed by ‘submit’.
I am at a loss to know what to do next.
Keith M
Thank you for your response. By the way, Windows 10 V20H2, up to date, browser Vivaldi, Bitwarden v 1.26.5.
No, nothing in the download folder (most recent first is the setting).
As you can see in my response to anon 1184, I have done full searches and found nothing. If my computer had a chimney, I would think they had gone up in smoke!
This can be a problematic scenario as your passwords are somewhere exposed. My recommendation is for you not to lose the calm and at some point you’ll be able to either track the file or be sure it never existed in the first place. Unfortunately Windows has very poor searching mechanism (I’m not a Windows hater that’s just a fact).
For years I’ve been using voidtools’ Everything (I won’t link as might be frown upon), I know is a hurdle to use more software in order to deal with a software you already have, but you won’t regret it as you can first run it portable mode to troubleshoot this hiccup; if you like it you can later install it or just dump it.
3rd party or not… please make sure you met the following criteria in order to find the smokey file:
- Show hidden and system files.
- Search in all the drives attached.
- Don’t include just *.csv, use *.*.
- Search by created date rather than modified date.
Why?
- Windows omits system files/folders and hidden ones too, your file might end up in a system folder or inside a hidden one.
- Also, the file could ended up in other than the system drive, perhaps a thumb drive you had plugged at the time.
- The file is a .csv but it can be saved with other extension inadvertently.
- Windows never modifies the created date, but messes with the modification date even when moving files around.
That said my last recommendation is to search by date and hour, one hour at a time… taking the time to check each possibility. And seriously, Everything (the search app) is an awesome tool that once I discovered it, has been a drop-in replacement … YMMV but at very least for finding the file is worth to try.
Good luck!
Thank you for your comprehensive advice. I downloaded ‘Everything’ and you are correct, it is a simple and apparently effective tool.
Problem is, it doesn’t find my Export file!
Just in case, I removed and reinstalled the BW extension, did another export as csv, searched for *.csv and found lots of files but not this one.
I then did an export in .json format, and did find this file C:\Users\keith\AppData\Roaming\Bitwarden\data.json created at the appropriate time. As it happens, it also found another .json file created in April, I have no idea why that might have been.
Problem is, I cannot use this format, and apparently the extension is failing to create the .csv file I need.
Do we know what the name given to an exported file would be?
Could there be any setting which is preventing the creation of a csv file?
Or can I hope your patience is not exhausted, and ask if you have any further suggestions?
Keith M
Keith, I suggest you export your BW vault from the web interface at https://vault.bitwarden.com. If you do it this way, your browser will handle the download directly and either prompt you to save it in a location you prefer or it will automatically go into your browser’s download folder.
David, thank you for your response, that workaround has certainly let me download the vault in Csv format, so I shan’t worry any more about finding out the reason for the difficulty.
Regards, Keith M
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I’m very glad you were able to solve your issue. Good thing is that Everything helped you to have the assurance your passwords are not in clear form who knows where. That was the point of including all extensions and go with creation date 1 hour at a time.