Migrate Vault from Bitwarden US to Bitwarden EU

[florider (Florian)]

So, I’d like to migrate my Bitwarden Vault from the US instance to the EU instance.
I’m just using Bitwarden for my personal passkeys, so there’s no data in my “Organisation”.

So, I’ve had a read through the Guide here and here, but it seems to me like there are a few challenges with the Export and Import approach.

1 - It doesn’t include any attachments.
2 - Does it include the 2FA settings?
3 - Does it include Passkeys? Sounds to me like they are attachments, no?

Has anyone ever tried this migration?

For now, I’m tempted to use the script found here as it covers attachments too, but I’d love to hear of any other suggestion on how to best copy over the vault and it’s data.

Thanks,

Florian

[Neuron5569]

Hi Florian, I have not migrated, but here’s what I understand. As an analogy, the migration is more like:

1. You delete your account, and then create another account, importing an old backup export.
2. You are migrating from another password manager, except that your passkeys will also be imported.

So, to answer your questions:

2. It doesn’t include 2FA. You have to set up everything like a new account except what are in your imported vault. Your BW’s 2FA info are not in your vault.
3. It does include passkeys.

Storing Passkeys | Bitwarden Help Center

Passkey support

No. As of now, passkeys are not supported in mobile apps (although Bitwarden is working on this). Yes, exports using the .json format do include passkey data, and such exports can be imported back into Bitwarden. However, there is as of yet no mechanism for exporting passkeys from one passkey wallet app (e.g., Bitwarden) and importing them into a completely different passkey wallet app (e.g., Windows Hello).

[kpiris (Kiko Piris)]

@Neuron5569

You delete your account, and then create another account

I did this migration a couple of months ago, I would delete the “old” account from the US server only after checking that everything is ok on the EU account and nothing is missing there.

You can keep the account on US server for how long you like.

[DenBesten]

@Neuron5569

You delete your account, and then create another account, importing an old backup export.

One small nitpick…

The two environments (.com and .eu) are completely separate, so there is no need to delete the “old” account until well after you have verified that the data is safely in the new account and everything works as expected.

[florider (Florian)]

Interesting! Did it migrate your 2FA seeds and Passkeys in Bitwarden?

[kpiris (Kiko Piris)]

Yes. Everything (even password history). The only two things that didn’t migrate with the export+import were:

• attachments: had to migrate them manually, one by one.
• item metadata (item creation and modification timestamps): that information is lost.

You need to use the json export file format.