How To Export LastPass To Bitwarden

On 16 March 2021, Lastpass changed its free tier policy which limited access to free accounts. With this change, many users started searching for a cheaper alternative, such as Bitwarden. As an open-source program, Bitwarden was more transparent and a suitable alternative.

If you are one of them and are trying to migrate to Bitwarden, you could simply import all the passwords from LastPass. However, since there’s no direct way to transfer passwords between these managers, you need to export the password from LastPass and then import it to Bitwarden.

Step 1: Export from LastPass

You must first export passwords from LastPass to a CSV file. To do so,

1. Click the LastPass Extension icon on your browser.
2. Click on Vault.
   
3. Select Advanced Options.
4. Under Manage Your Vault, click Export.
   
5. Enter your Master Password and hit Continue.
6. It will open a save window. Here, navigate to the location where you wish to save the CSV file. Then, click Save.

Step 2: Import to Bitwarden

Then, follow the steps below to import the CSV file from Bitwarden. If you encounter any errors, you need to open your CSV file and troubleshoot it before trying again (see the section below).

1. Log in to your Bitwarden vault.
2. From the top navigation bar, click on Tools.
3. Click on Import Data.
   
4. Set Select the format of the import file to LastPass (CSV).
5. Click on Choose file.
6. Navigate to and select the CSV file on your local disk.
7. Click Import Data.
   

You can also use the Bitwarden Command-line Interface to import passwords from the LastPass CSV file.

1. Open your Bitwarden CLI.
2. Type the command bw login and press Enter.
3. Enter your credentials to log in.
4. Then enter the command: bw import lastpasscsv "path of CSV file". Here, replace the “path of CSV file” with the file’s path in your local drive.
   

What to Do if You Get Errors While Importing to Bitwarden?

Depending on the passwords or other information on the CSV file, you may encounter some possible errors while trying to import it to Bitwarden. The possible errors and their solutions are as follows:

Data is Not Formatted Correctly

If you have any special characters in your passwords, they may get changed to the respective HTML codes while exporting to the CSV file. For instance, & can convert to &. Look through all such codes and change them appropriately to resolve the issue.

The Field … Exceeds the Maximum Encrypted Value Length

Bitwarden won’t import data if the length of an encrypted value (which is 30-50% higher than the length of the original value) is higher than 10000. The error will be in the following format: “Index number” “Vault item type” “Name of item”: The Field “Field name” exceeds the maximum encrypted value length of 100000 characters.

So, you can go to that index number and reduce the length of the item to less than in the column to fix it. 

This organization can only have a maximum of 2 collections

This error can occur while importing a CSV file with more than two distinct values in the grouping field a Free Organization. It is because a Free Organization only supports sharing the data with one extra user. To fix this issue, you need to delete the grouping column entirely, along with the trailing comma.