I had a password appear in a hack, and so I wanted to see where I may have used that password on what accounts. So I opened Bitwarden and searched for it. I was surprised to find that I could not search my vault for passwords! 
Then I decided to Export the vault and search the resulting file. I first exported to CSV, because I had used it before to do some cleanup with importing my Firefox PW into Bitwarden initially. However, I found that some information was missing, like Card entries. I then read in the FAQ that JSON was the ‘preferred’ method and that it included more information than the CSV file (they REALLY should be the same).
So, I exported JSON and although the FAQ does state that you can open it in Notepad, there are no CR/LF in the file apparently because it is basically unusable in Notepad. It then requires a program such as UltraEdit, or some other program that that properly display JSON, but then you have to worry about backup files, temp files, and all kinds of leakage of your unencrypted data. THIS SHOULDN’T BE THIS HARD.
At any rate, the issue I face, and perhaps it is a bug, is that the exported file (even after re-syncing several times) contains login entries that have been deleted from the vault and the CSV file contained old passwords that had been changed (i.e., it was showing the history versions and not the new ones).
Not only that but the JSON file has the NEW passwords, but not the old ones (the history). If these files are to be used as backups, it seems that neither do a very good job of it. If it is the intent NOT to include password histories in the exported files, then why keep them at all in the vault? At least this should be made clear during export (maybe it is and I just missed it, but a popup that explains that this Export is NOT a real complete backup of your vault would be nice).
Can someone please shed some light on this discrepancy in CSV vs JSON, and the fact that neither are truly a complete backup?
Thanks,
Griz