I’m not sure whether customer support can change your login email address on your behalf, given the constraints of Bitwarden’s “Zero Knowledge” design. But you can do so yourself (after your original account is deleted), by logging in to your new account through the Web Vault client (vault.bitwarden.com), then clicking on your profile icon, and selecting “Account Settings”, which will take you to the “My Account” section of the Account Settings. On the “My Account” page, enter your master password and the desired new email address. You should receive a confirmation email with a verification code to enter on the email change form in the Web Vault, which will complete the change and log you out. You will then be able to log back in using the new email address.
As far as deleting the old account goes, customer support might be able to do that for you, but you can also do it yourself, using the self-service account deletion form available at https://vault.bitwarden.com/#/recover-delete.
The only part you can’t do yourself is to transfer your Premium subscription from your old account to your new account. You will need to make a request for this account credit to customer support.
In your original post, you literally wrote “I did an export of a json file, not the encrypted version”, so I didn’t think that warning you about encrypted JSON exports was relevant. The help documentation about Encrypted Exports that you linked is up-to-date and accurate, and the documentation clearly warns that you will not be able to import an encrypted export into a different account (unless you had used the Web Vault export tool and explicitly selected the “Password Protected” option for the encrypted file type).
You can get the recovery key either before or after you enable 2FA. The process for getting the 2FA recovery key is independent of the process for enabling 2FA, which is probably why you missed it (although there is a pretty prominent warning about the importance of the recovery code right at the top of the 2FA setup page, as shown in the screen shot below).
Once the vaults are sorted out, I think I saw something in the yubikey software that there is a factory reset or some such thing for the key. Would that be a good place to start?
It looks to me like there is a choice between the authenticator in bitwarden and the yubikey authenticator. On my first attempt I used the bitwarden authenticator. Not sure which one to use . . .
You might want to start a new thread about that, or ideally, get help from a Yubikey-dedicated forum, like /r/yubikey on Reddit, since it is a bit off-topic for the Bitwarden forum (however, you never know, someone here might be able to help you with your Yubikey questions).
Again, that would be a topic for a new thread. There are pros and cons to either approach.
Thanks for all of the details about dealing with the accounts. I have asked them to do it.
You refer to my original post about having a non-encrypted backup. That is not the backup I used. I mentioned later that I had a unbuntu box that had not been connected to the net since prior to this adventure. It was still running and the cache it had in its own BW app was still there. I did a back up from there and used it to do the restore.
I do see the recovery code warning. It is indeed clear. I think I had some problem getting that to function and logged out thinking what mattered was to have codes after I logged back in. Not a mistake I will make again.
I think I remember a bit more about how I blundered my way through the obvious warning about recovery codes. Just as I did now, I tried to produce them before I turned on 2FA. It wouldn’t let me until 2FA is enabled. I think that is what I ran into before and made the mistaken conclusion I should log out and back in before setting up the recovery codes. Then when I messed up on configuring the yubikey, I couldn’t get back in.
I had responded to warn you that it was likely the Ubuntu box exports were not up-to-date. Thus, it would have been better to use your original exports from the Windows computer when setting up your new account. But if you have not made any updates or changes to your vault since you last used Bitwarden on the Ubuntu box while it was online (connected to the internet), then it may not make a difference.
