I saved login credentials for an account and I put the account recovery keys in the notes. Not sure if that’s the best way to do that, but now they’re gone. All that’s in the notes is a symbol that I’ve never seen before and can’t find information about. I tried google lens and there wasn’t anything close to it. Has anyone experienced this? Thoughts on what happened and if it’s fixable?
If you click Edit, do the contents of the Note field look the same on the Edit page?
If you export your vault in an unencrypted format (CSV or JSON), do you see the same thing in the note field for that item when you open the exported file in a text editor?
If you use a different device (preferably one with a different operating system), so you see the same thing?
Do you know approximately how long (how many characters) the recovery key data was?
Thanks for the reply!
Clicking Edit doesn’t help. I can copy it, but no text editor even knows what it is.
I exported it the way that you said, and the notes column is blank. I actually found another account’s credentials that had a note, and it also has that same symbol, but in the CSV it shows a square (like how when a character isn’t found and matches what happens when I copy that symbol into some text editors). Not all notes are like this though. Some of those notes are very old, so it doesn’t seem like they all were lost at one point in time and then it kept my notes after that.
On my android, the accounts with that symbol show blank.
I could probably figure out how many characters it was if I create a new account and count the number of characters in those recovery keys. Do you know what I could do with that information though? It seems like it’s gone permanently.
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Did you insert all those three symbols () here intentionally? – I might be getting paranoid now, but if it wasn’t intentionally, this might be a clue to what happened to your notes.
I agree with @Nail1684 — it seems that whatever device you are using seems to be inserting unrecognized characters when you input text into a form… Could be a clue!
I asked because Notes fields can only contain approximately 7500 characters, so if the recovery key was extremely long, it is possible that this has something to do with the problem.
More questions:
- When did you create this vault item?
- When did you last modify the vault item?
- Was the recovery code saved and correctly displayed right after you added it to the vault item?
- When did you first notice the data corruption?
Ha, @franklin19c if you don’t know which symbols we mean:
Because those symbols won’t be displayed if you e.g. visit the forum on Android, as I just found out:
I was trying to figure out what you meant my 3 symbols, and then saw in the email notification about your message. I don’t see those squares in my messages. Is that what you were referring to?
That might have been me messing around with trying to copy and paste that symbol. That square seems to show up when the thing you’re using (web browser, notepad, etc) doesn’t recognize a symbol.
In my original screenshot, that one symbol is all I get. Never multiple symbols.
Sorry about the confusion, and thanks for the help.
Yes, but the real question is — why are those unrecognizable symbols getting randomly inserted into the text that you are inputting? As noted above, @Nail1684 and I are both thinking that whatever is causing this may also have played a role in the corruption of your Note data.
Also, it would be helpful if you could provide responses to the questions I had posed above:
I created the vault item at least 3 years ago. Not sure what year.
I last modified that vault item probably 3 years ago. Maybe as soon as a year ago.
I assume that it was saved correctly. I didn’t see anything wrong and it’s been a long time. The password is still saved.
I first noticed that problem about 2 weeks ago when I tried to get the recovery codes for that account. I haven’t been able to get into the account since and the company doesn’t care to help.
You two are the only ones helping. Thanks. It’s really appreciated.
Do you have any old vault exports, or even general backups of your computer or other devices where you may have logged in to Bitwarden in the past three years?
I might have an export from bitwarden on an external hard drive. I’m pretty sure it’s on the storage account that I’m locked out of, but I should double check before giving up.
I don’t have a good backup of my computers. I moved completely to Linux recently so all are pretty new installs.
Thanks again for your help. I can’t thank you enough.
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I have seen those square or rectangular characters like this in my Bitwarden notes as well. Yes, often in older notes that I may not have opened in a while.
I always edit the notes and delete those characters. So if its a fault that happened in once instance, then maybe I’ll eventually fix them all, and erase any evidence of them.
It just seems worth knowing that another user has the same “bug” in the notes.
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Hi all, for the team to look into what you are describing, don’t hesitate to contact the official support team at: Help Center | Bitwarden
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