It appears that some time recently the browser extension was changed so that it’s impossible to delete items that are in an organization through it.
Not only that, but if I log into vault.bitwarden.com I also can’t delete org entries from the default view that comes up there.
To delete org entries I now have to log into vault.bitwarden.com, switch to the organization, find the entry that I want to delete, and delete it.
This is a terrible regression as far as I am concerned. Am I missing something?
I’m the owner of our family organization. I keep pretty much all of my vault entries in the organization, not my personal vault, so that if something happens to me my family will have easy access to them. I have been doing things this way for years, and I have over 1,000 vault entries in the organization.
To suddenly discover that I have to go through a convoluted process I didn’t have to go through before to delete entries is really not OK.
If you felt this restriction might be desirable to some people you could have made it an organization setting.
Can we please get that setting added so that I am once again able to delete org entries using the quick, streamlined workflow I have been able to use for many years?
If you wish to communicate directly with Bitwarden, please use the contact form available here. This is a community forum, and although Bitwarden employees sometimes participate in the forum, most participants here are just fellow Bitwarden users/customers (myself included).
To delete organization items, you must have “Can Manage” permissions to the collection from which you wish to delete items. To check/modify your permissions, log in to the Web Vault, open the Admin Console, click on “Members” in the left-hand navigation menu, then click on your account name in the list of organization members. In the “Edit Member” pop-up, open the “Collections” tab, where you will see what permissions you have for each collection in the organization.
Once you have set your permissions to “Can Manage”, you should be able to delete organization items as usual.
I have “Owners and admins can manage all collections and items” enabled, and I am the owner of the organization, but I still can’t delete items in org collections through the browser extension, unless I also set my own personal permission on the collections to “Can Manage” as @grb suggested. This seems like a bug.
I am having exactly the same problem. I have two users in my family and have been sharing the passwords securely by making them members of the single organization. Suddenly I am no longer able to delete items.
I have owner access to the collections. Is there a way to go back to a previous version of the bitwarden extension?
@parakalan Welcome to the forum! Some browser app stores allow you to access old versions of extensions (e.g., Firefox), or if you have a browser that allows side-loading of unsigned browser extensions, you can download the old versions from GitHub (click on “Assets” to see the download links). However, downgrading extensions is not recommended, and may create more problems than it solves. Why not simply use the solution from my post above?
@jik Some of the changed behavior was evidently intentional, but I agree that it may be a bug at the very least insofar as the current behavior seems inconsistent with the documentation, which says the following (emphasis added):
With this option turned on, owners and admins will be able to add, edit, view, or remove vault items from any collection, add or remove members and groups from any collection, edit collection information, and delete a collection outright from the Admin Console.
…although it is unclear whether the qualifying clause at the end of the sentence (“…from the Admin Console”) is supposed to apply to the entire sentence, or only to the part about collection deletion.
Perhaps @RyanL can clarify. Alternatively, you can post a bug report on GitHub and see if Bitwarden staff close the issue because it is expected behavior.
Disagreement between documentation and running code is in-and-of itself a bug. So, yes it should be reported, including the doc link. The devs get to decide if the bug is within the docs or the code.
The entire sentence. The comma before the “and” is an oxford comma. This has been litigated to the tune of 5 million dollars. It also forms the title of a NYT-Bestseller grammar book, Eats, Shoots and Leaves
While I enjoyed the link to the legal case, in fairness, Bitwarden’s use of the Oxford comma only removes the possibility of interpreting “edit collection information and delete a collection” as a single, combined action. It does not remove the structural ambiguity about the scope of the prepositional phrase — the so-called “attachment ambiguity”, which is the subject of a significant body of research in linguistics.
The behavior that you should be experiencing is that, with Owners and admins can manage all collections and items turned on, the admins and owners should have unfettered abilities to create, edit, and delete items. If this is not occurring it is indeed a bug.
If you are not an admin or owner, you would need to have the Can Manage permission for the organization. I’ll share this information with the team.
I’m also inquiring if the change was intentional to limit deletion to the admin console.
Hi @RyanL - I have Owner access to the Collection with the Can Manage role. I am still unable to see the Delete Item option within the Browser Extension. I did raise an issue with BitWarden official support - however I got the same message as above that only with the Can Manage privilege, we will be able to delete items. I will try deleting the extension and reinstalling.
Hello! This is Priya from the product team. The “Owners and admins can manage all collections and items” setting controls behavior in the Admin Console. When enabled, the setting allows owners and admins to manage all items within the Admin Console only, not from other clients, as described here.
To view / edit / manage items from the individual vault and across other clients, you will need a direct collection permission assigned. However, these collection management settings would not have removed permissions you previously had.
To help me better understand the issue, could you share what collection permissions you have for the collections / items in question?
@parakalan - that’s unexpected behavior. If you could share what browser you’re experiencing this on in the support ticket, we can try reproducing that behavior. Thanks!
Hi Priya, I uninstalled the extension and reinstalled it. I am able to see the delete item button now. I also configured my account to have “Can Manage” access to the collections.