Leaving a team deleted all my personal workspaces

[w4dd325]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the tracker for existing similar issues and I know that duplicates will be closed

Describe the Issue

I joined a team to help someone build something (which I have done a few times in the past).
Once I had finished helping them I left the team.

When I left there was a message that said I would no longer have access to workspaces owned by the team including personal workspaces (I had not seen this before). But I had to leave this team regardless as it was with someone I didn't know that I was helping temporarily.

On leaving this team, ALL of my workspaces including all my personal workspaces that I had created prior to joining this team temporarily have now vanished.

How can I get my workspaces back?
And how can users leave a team without losing all their existing work and collections?

Steps To Reproduce

Joined a new team
Left the new team
All workspaces vanished.

Screenshots or Videos

No response

Operating System

Windows

Postman Version

9.27.1

Postman Platform

Both

Additional Context?

No response

[ArjunSingh-PM]

Hi @w4dd325, thanks for reporting this issue. Would you be able to reach out to the person you assigned your personal workspaces to before you left the team? If yes, you can request them to export your collections and environments and share the same with you.

[kathychurch]

This happened to myself and another person yesterday as well when our team trial ended. Lost access to our personal workspaces and all their contents. I requested for one of the people still on the team to export our collections, but he was unable to find them.

[w4dd325]

I will try but the person I was helping is not someone I know... So fingers crossed they try and help.
Either way, this feels like it could be a massive security risk, as you are saying that the random guy I was helping now has visibility and ownership of all of my personal workspaces... Unless I have misunderstood??

[w4dd325]

I messaged the person 3 days ago but as of yet I have not heard back and still have no access to any of my workspaces.
Are there any other ways to get these back?

[w4dd325]

A little bit of additional information. I just noticed all of my previously created API keys have also disappeared.

It's almost like, when I left the team, my profile was completely recreated.

---

I had a couple of theories on ways to improve the behaviour of leaving a team...

The first is; only remove team workspaces when you leave a team.

If there is a need to remove personal workspaces then only remove personal workspaces created while being part of that team.
Or, when leaving a team the user could be prompted to backup personal workspaces (like the export all data option). And make it explicitly clear that ALL workspaces would be lost if not backed up.

It just seems really odd to me, that all workspaces, even personal workspaces would be tied to a team.

For example; If I was working on a personal project where I wanted to keep quiet until I was ready to share, the ownership of that workspace (which was personal, and not team related in any way) would be transferred to the team ... even if its set as a "personal" workspace.

Hope this information will help you tweak the behaviour of leaving a team. 🤞

[ramji367]

@w4dd325 - We are making immediate changes to both the Join team and Leave team flows to incorporate the feedback. The ability to join multiple teams will not be available for some users until we roll out these fixes.

[w4dd325]

One other thing I noticed, is this;

I have now rejoined my original work team (3 people) ... but the contributor lists "1 Private User" ... which is me but from when I was originally in the team.

[frasermclean]

This has just happened to me too and I have lost all of my personal collections!

[cosstoica]

Also ran into this. I had a personal workspace which was not shared with the team. I created a new team just to see how it would work (I was preparing to share that workspace, but not with the test team), however after leaving the test team and seeing the warning (that basically warns us about shared content being lost) I lost everything, like my account was basically reset.

[nogamenofun98]

I also has this issue, I am the admin of the team workspace, and for some reason it keep showing me someone in the workspace is using v9 and it block me from using my postman window app, so i removed everyone and myself so can get rid of the error.

But IT REMOVED ALL THE DATA INCLUDING PERSONAL WORKSPACE????
How can I retrieve back those data?? It has my production system collection api and a lot of thing inside, now is empty

@ramji367

[w4dd325]

Further to my previous messages;

When using my original team, I created this workspace/game
https://www.postman.com/galaxy-quest-996184/workspace/save-the-postman-space-station/overview

I still have access to this public workspace as it was somehow linked to my original work team that i rejoined... however the private workspace that underpins this game (the one with the mock servers and examples etc) is completely missing.

Of all the workspaces I lost, this is the one that I would really appreciate getting back. Is this possible?... the game still works, so this workspace must exist somewhere, right?

Here are the details (from the community group) of the guy that I joined in a team when providing help...

Maybe that workspace is still attached to his account???

[mwiedemeyer]

Just had the same issue. ALL DATA IS LOST. Even on a different (offline) machine, Postman starts and shows only "You are offline". Is there no offline cache of all my workspaces? How can I get my data back?

[sergiojrdotnet]

I ran into this sadly surprise today too 😢

[aaronguostudio]

It happened to me one month ago sadly too. This feature is done poorly honestly.

Here is what happened:

• When creating a new workspace, the team is selected by default, many users won't recognize what's the consequence.
• The version lock makes things even worse. Have you guys thought about a situation that one user may join both paid plan and the free team-based plan? When switching accounts, there is a version lock message, I can't use the app without a downgrade lol.
• In order to solve the issue, I tried to leave the new team-based free workspace that I just created.
• Then all my personal workspaces are gone.
• A lot of my personal workspace are created years ago, how come they moved into that new team-based workspace? I have no idea.
• Honestly, this feature is done poorly. I know you guys got a big fund, it's great, I am happy to see Postman grows fast, and I pushed my firm rolled into the paid plan.
• But, I also hope you can keep the quality while trying to move fast, and hopefully, you can help us find back the lost data.

Plus, the monitor feature is great, but, the users have to choose the whole workspace. All the APIs in that workspace will be run without a clear warning. If you have some bulk delete operation and accidentally select that collection, ha good luck. Honestly, it's hard to imagine this poor design is happening on Postman, it supposes to be a well-designed and mature product in my impression.

Thanks!

[mwiedemeyer]

I gave up on my lost workspaces and moved to Insomnia. It's also a great product and has build-in git support. So no more lost collections.

[igorbljahhin]

Same here. I added a friend to our team to assist us on the development of REST interfaces. Now after removal a friend from our team, his PRIVATE workspace has been deleted. WTF?

[predragbabic]

what a dumb way to randomly associate all workspaces to accidentally created team and then wipe it all out when deleting that team... UX subzero 😤

[Fernando-Uzun]

I lost my workspace too.
I identified a name on a team that I didn't create linked to my account.
By deleting it, I lost all my workspace!!!
I can't recover because I don't have a team. :-/

[hippasus]

same here....

I've lost all data saved for years....

crazy...

[RizqiSyahrendra]

wow, I've also lost all my data because of this

[Windturne]

Thanks to that, freakin 5 AM in the morning I have to restore and export one by one for every workspace and every old team. I assume this is some sort of morning wake up call joke Postman's been working on.

[joseph-ayodele]

Lost my collections and environment variables as well, thanks postman

[joelmellon]

Mixing Teams and personal workspaces is horrible. I'm scared to leave a team after reading all this.

I also have to wonder what would happen if I was removed from a team?! Is my personal stuff in the hands of someone else? ...an employer, a partner, etc?

[thmszheng]

this just happened to me... noticed I'm in a random team with 2 people and removed both of us then boom all the collection/workspaces/environment I personally created are all gone. Insane how something like this could happen. I submitted a support ticket and if this can't fixed, it's literally one of the worst feature I ever seen

[TogMike]

Just happened to me. Had my personal collection for years, joined someone else's team for access to a project we were working on. Project ended, I was removed from that team. Suddenly all my personal collection is gone. 100% gone. How is that even possible? Years are just gone, my account looks completely empty now.

[johnoffenhartzPM]

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and frustration caused by the roll-out of the ability to join multiple teams.

One of the safeguards built into this was designed to protect our enterprise customers' data. Unfortunately, it had the unintended consequence of, at best, not letting work leave a team and, at worst, essentially orphaning some of our free users' data.

We designed this feature with the best intentions to provide our enterprise users with an extra layer of security to protect their sensitive information. However, we badly misjudged the effects these features would have on users casually joining and leaving teams.

Realizing our mistake, we immediately added warning messages, but warning signs do not replace a proper safety net. And since then, we've done our best to recover the work of folks who've reached out to us.

We've now made it so that users can keep their personal work separate when joining teams, and we've added a feature to let them leave a team with their work if they mistakenly moved their personal work into it. Unfortunately, at least for the moment, this will only work once, but we're working hard to make this repeatable.

Additionally, in cases where a user leaves a team with just themselves on the team, and they leave their work behind, we'll retain users' work for 30 days and have provided mechanisms for our support team to recover and return this data.

So please don't hesitate to contact us if you encounter any issues. We're committed to making sure you can keep your personal work.

And again, our apologies for all the inconvenience. We're working on mechanisms to let you move your work around as seamlessly as possible, and we'll keep you updated.

Thanks for your understanding.

[w4dd325]

Hi @johnoffenhartzPM, I appreciate you taking the time to reply.

From the information provided it sounds like I will not get my original workspaces back and that the fixes you have put in place will only work from now onward, is this a correct understanding?

For myself, I could live with that as I have (since opening the ticket) rebuilt what I lost. But some of the others in this thread have lost a lot of data, is there anything else that can be done to find and restore this data? Or are you (Postman, not you personally) saying that we have to now accept this data loss and move forward with the fixes you have implemented?

Thank you for your time!

[nogamenofun98]

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and frustration caused by the roll-out of the ability to join multiple teams.

One of the safeguards built into this was designed to protect our enterprise customers' data. Unfortunately, it had the unintended consequence of, at best, not letting work leave a team and, at worst, essentially orphaning some of our free users' data.

We designed this feature with the best intentions to provide our enterprise users with an extra layer of security to protect their sensitive information. However, we badly misjudged the effects these features would have on users casually joining and leaving teams.

Realizing our mistake, we immediately added warning messages, but warning signs do not replace a proper safety net. And since then, we've done our best to recover the work of folks who've reached out to us.

We've now made it so that users can keep their personal work separate when joining teams, and we've added a feature to let them leave a team with their work if they mistakenly moved their personal work into it. Unfortunately, at least for the moment, this will only work once, but we're working hard to make this repeatable.

Additionally, in cases where a user leaves a team with just themselves on the team, and they leave their work behind, we'll retain users' work for 30 days and have provided mechanisms for our support team to recover and return this data.

So please don't hesitate to contact us if you encounter any issues. We're committed to making sure you can keep your personal work.

And again, our apologies for all the inconvenience. We're working on mechanisms to let you move your work around as seamlessly as possible, and we'll keep you updated.

Thanks for your understanding.

Hi @johnoffenhartzPM , I appreciate that some solution is implemented, just hope no one else will get affected by this issue.

[johnoffenhartzPM]

Hi @johnoffenhartzPM, I appreciate you taking the time to reply.

From the information provided it sounds like I will not get my original workspaces back and that the fixes you have put in place will only work from now onward, is this a correct understanding?

I'm afraid this solution will only help folks going forward. For anyone who was forced to leave work behind on a team, you should reach out to the owners of that team and see if they can return the work to you.

Again, our apologies for all the trouble.

[QuintinHumphreys]

Postman teams are an absolute joke. I somehow became a member of a team when a peer added me to share some data a while ago. He also made me an admin of the team. now when i login it seems to default to login AS the team instead of myself. it also says the TEAM owns my personal workspace.

i never wanted this, its crazy that this is whats happening. why cant people just share workspaces or collections between each other directly without involving any kind of team features?

can someone tell me how to

1. remove my personal workspace from teh team
2. remove myself from the team but continue to collaborate without a team

[ArjunSingh-PM]

@QuintinHumphreys We apologize for the inconvenience caused.

Could you please submit a support request here or email us directly at help@postman.com? We will help you with your concerns. Thanks.

[tahirraza21]

I encountered almost the same issue. I deleted an unused workspace and suddenly all my other workspaces vanished. I lost all my organisational data. I spent an hour in searching for the solution and at the end I submitted a support request but couldn't find a workaround. I hope I will get my data or else I don't know what will happen. I am using postman since 2016 but this happened to me for the first time and it's a big loss for me. :(

[ArjunSingh-PM]

Hi @tahirraza21! Thank you for reaching out to our support team. We greatly appreciate your cooperation and for sharing the necessary details, which allowed us to assist you in retrieving your workspaces. We are delighted to know that you now have complete access to all your workspaces.

[ramji367]

@Kaaswastablet - Could you please submit a support request here or email us directly at help@postman.com?

[Kaaswastablet]

Thank you! My Workspaces have been restored after contacting support

[dima123493]

The only solution I found that somehow guarantees the safety of your data in the constant change of teams is the default creation of your own team only for yourself. This way all your data will be in your personal "team" and you will be able to safely switch between other teams without the risk of losing your personal collections, workspaces, monitors and so on.
Disadvantage of this is that there are 10 active teams available, and you book one of that teams for your purposes only.