Import to an Organization

Import data directly to your organization for easy migration to Bitwarden from any password management solution. For a full list of supported import formats, refer to this FAQ. There are two methods for importing data directly to your organization:

• Organization owners, admins, and custom role users with the correct permission can import items with the organization Admin Console using the instructions in this article.

• Organization members with the Manage collection permission can import data directly to any collection for which they have that permission by following this process.

Data can only be imported to an organization from the web app. Data is encrypted locally before being sent to the server for storage. To import data to an organization:

1. Log in to the Bitwarden web app and open the Admin Console:

   

2. Navigate to Settings → Import data:
   

   

3. On the Import data view, select the file format you intend to import in the Data section. If you're importing an encrypted export, note that there is no separate option. Select .json and a handler will determine that the file is encrypted and attempt to decrypt the file using either your account's encryption key or encrypted export password.

   tip

   If you want the contents of your import file placed directly into a specific collection, use the Collection dropdown in the Destination section to choose a collection. This is typically most useful when importing chunks of data for use by a specific user population as opposed to importing all of your organization's data.

4. Select Choose file and add the file to import, or copy/paste the contents of your file into the input box.

   warning

   Importing does not check whether items in the file to import already exist in your vault. If you import multiple files or import files with items already in your vault, this will create duplicates.

5. Select Import data to trigger the import. If you are importing a password protected .json file, enter the password into the Confirm Vault Import window that will appear.

File attachments will need to be manually uploaded to your vault.

File attachments must be manually migrated to your Bitwarden vault, as they are currently not including in bulk import operations. Please note that storage of file attachments is available only for premium users, including members of paid organizations (families, teams, or enterprise).

The following error messages, typically received when attempting to import a .csv, indicate that an item in your import file has a specified value that exceeds the allowed encrypted character limit for its field type:

To solve this issue, open the .csv file in a text editor or spreadsheet program and remove or reduce the character count of the offending item. Bitwarden won't import your .csv file until it is free of offenses. The contents of the error messages contain several pieces of pertinent data to help you identify the offending item. For example, in the above example:

• [1] identifies the index number where the offending item is located, adjusted to match row numbering in most spreadsheet programs.

• [Login] identifies the vault item type of the offending item.

• "Facebook" identifies the name of the offending item.

• Notes indicates the field (column) where the character limit is exceeded.

• 10000 indicates the character limit allowed for that field (column).

  tip

  On import, the character count of any given field is increased due to encryption, meaning that an 8000-character Notes field in your .csv will scale to 10,000+ characters when it comes into contact with Bitwarden, triggering this error. As a rule of thumb, character counts will grow between 30-50% when encrypted.

If you continue to have trouble locating the offending item using the data provided in the error, it may help to focus first on notes as these are frequently the cause of this error.

Imports may be rejected for exceeding any of the following data limitations:

• If your import has more than 40,000 items.

• If your import has more than 2,000 folders.

• If your import has more than 2,000 collections.

• If your import has more than 7,000 item-folder relationships (e.g. a single item in 3 folders can be said to have 3 item-folder relationships).

• If your import has more than 80,000 item-collection relationships (e.g. a single item in 3 collections can be said to have 3 item-collection relationships).

If you are a user, rather than an admin or owner, importing data to an organization requires that all imported credentials have at least one collection associated with them. To resolve this error, you can:

• Select an existing collection that you have Can manage access to from the Collection dropdown on the import screen before importing your data. Doing so will add the items to this collection.

• Specify a new collection name for the unassigned items in your import file. Doing so will automatically create that collection and add the items to it. For help conditioning your import file, refer to this article.