Hi all,
I went to log in, and a couple hundred passwords are missing from my vault tonight. This happened within the last couple hours, since I was able to pull a computer that I used earlier today and disconnect it from the internet and it still has everything.
I read somewhere that Bitwarden uses Microsoft services, and they’re having some troubles today. Is anyone else experiencing this issue? I really hope that I haven’t just lost all my passwords.
Thanks
Hello Marc, and welcome to the community!
Did you put your passwords in to an org’s vault? Recent BW update “disappeared” org’s passwords that are not assigned to a collection, and can now only be accessed from the admin panel. The 3.1 web vault supposedly includes a tool ( Collections | Bitwarden Help Center ) to assign these passwords en masse into a collection.
(edited: You can only export unassigned org’s items from the web client.)
Hello, and thank you for the link. They are back now. That was absolutely terrifying.
Yes, I think it’s high time that I start backing up the vault regularly.
I am experiencing the same thing and am in a bit of a panic because a few hundred of my passwords - ones that were in an org vault - are only now available from one chrome extension on one of my laptops. Everywhere else, those passwords have disappeared.
How do I assign those passwords into a collection, or is there another way to retrieve these passwords. I’m not understanding how to do that from the article that was linked by Neuron 5569.
Hello, Thundershoe, and welcome to the community:
From the web vault, this is how you open the admin console (click on the Admin Console):
You should click on the Vault item on the left panel, which gives you something like this, with all your “missing” passwords included:
And follow the BW instructions in the link above.
Nevermind! Everything’s resolved - I got more clarity on the suggested solution, i.e. assigning the passwords to a collection. I reached out to support and received a lightning quick answer - it’s 2am where I’m at and wasn’t expecting such a fast response!
Ultiamtely, my real issue was that I didn’t realize there was a toggle to switch from the “Password Manager” view to the “Admin Console” view. I just haven’t been on the web app for literally years and totally forgot! Thanks very much for your help though!
Thank you so much for this solution. 
I had a long day and came home to most of my passwords missing and entered panic mode.
I haven’t tried it, but for anyone looking to move the items from the org vault to “My Vault”, if you go to Tools when under the regular “Password Manager” page, you can export/import your vaults there.
Also, now is a good time to make sure you have a backup of your vaults somewhere safe. Just in case.
The definitive explanation from Bitwarden is available here:
This is a bumble f* right from the beginning. No advance notice (that I’m aware of), just missing pwords when I need them. Then incomplete suggestions to remedy the problem. I’m hardly a neophyte, and struggling to figure out how to get the missing data back to where I can find it in my app. Needless complicated and poorly rolled out. Moved here from KeePass and have been really happy until now, but might be looking at a different pword solution.
What an incredibly poorly handled change.
Most insane update ever. Never do it again plz! You may be responsible for a heart attack death
Looks like they know exactly how badly they screwed up here.
New views for passwords and the new Admin Console - Status Page - Bitwarden
Hi all - Gina from the product team.
Bitwarden recently expanded the permissions structure for collections to offer new features and communicated that via emails to Organization Owners and Administrators.
One unanticipated change involved Unassigned items, which do not technically sit in a collection, and therefore cannot have any permissions applied to them. For this reason, they were converted to admin-only items to allow for reassignment.
Bitwarden didn’t properly account for users employing ‘Unassigned’ as a permanent place for vault items. This, and missed opportunities to further detail this behavior ahead of time, caused unnecessary confusion for Bitwarden users. We apologize for this unintended experience and appreciate your input as Bitwarden continues to improve communication with everyone.
I chose to use folders over collections for organizing my vault when I set this up a couple years ago and haven’t thought about it since. My vault looks organized and I’ve never had a problem until this instance.
If Bitwarden doesn’t expect or want users having an “Unassigned” collection, why even have it? Why not put everything in “Default collection” by, well, default?
All organization items created must be assigned a collection, which is why all organizations are created with a “Default” collection. Items only get into an unassigned state if all collections were deleted. It was originally designed as a temporary state and we now realize that some folks leave it unassigned.
Maybe you could disallow deletion of collections that are not empty to prevent this from occurring…
I only have “Default Collection” and “Unassigned.” I’m not sure how my items ended up in either one. I don’t recall ever messing with the collections, so I don’t know how 2/3rds of my vault ended up “Unassigned” and then seemingly went missing today with the update.
Richard, I ditched Lastpass a few years ago after the new company locked out all non paying users without warning. I found Bitwarden and it was great until yesterday when they made changes without giving any advance communication to users. I’m going back to a spreadsheet. I will miss mobile device syncing but I cannot spend 11 hours every time changes are made that impact my daily workflow and cause me to miss important meetings.
@WDA, I moved your comment into a more relevant thread (since it had nothing to do with Richard’s issue).
As a tip, whether you use Excel or something else to store critical data (such as passwords that are essential for your daily workflow and attendance at important meetings), it is advisable to make back-up copies of the data. This practice will allow you to restore the data in case you unexpectedly lose access to the original files (e.g., through file corruption, malware, computer malfunction, theft, fire, natural catastrophes, or acts of war).
I was surprised at how many of my creds were “unassigned”. I almost exclusively add new creds using the android app and it enforces a collection on all entries I move to my organization. I followed the steps to move all these orphaned items to a collection, which certainly ended my freak-out.
But then, to test things, I edited an entry and removed the only collection, which moved it back to unassigned (as expected). Considering this is possible - to set an entry to “unassigned” - is there a stable use case for this? I have some credentials that I no longer use, but I don’t feel comfortable deleting yet. Might I unassign them to, in a way, “archive” them? I only ask because if BW has plans for this area, or items get deleted after a certain point, I don’t want to rely on this being a stable location to store old creds.