KeePass

Factual Questions
1

OK, I am an idiot, I willingly will admit it.

Can someone give me really simple instructions on using KeePass? I have a USB stick, I have a laptop and a desktop. I am tired of flipping between them and having to remember my damned passwords, especially if I have changed one on one platform a month previously and am now able to sit up at my desk again [pfh, makes me want to take to my bed and just use the damned laptop again.] I also want to go to a portable version of Firefox and Thunderbird [mainly because I hate trying to figure out all my damned favorite web pages and blogs, and I detest trying to read email online on a web page, dates back to dial up and clicking around on a email page could take 5 minutes to open up an email. Besides, I juggle 4 email accounts between one in my real name, one in my SCA name, and 2 different in game names.] And I use a different computer when we are up at my Mothers house, or if I am visiting someone.

TLDNR - Help, I want to load my life onto a damned thumb drive so I don’t need to try and sync 4 or more computers at 3 or more locations … and I really don’t want every web page I visit to have Bumblefuck as the account name and Abcdef1! as the password …

2

Assuming you can download the zip file and unzip it on a stick, you have to set it up to get going. It’s no big deal. Once the program is running, click on the leftmost button (New) and you’ll pop up a box asking for a Master Password. This is the one you’re going to have to remember as it gives you access to run the program and keeps people who find your lost stick drive out. Then you have to enter it again. It can be anything. Then there will be a window that lets you configure certain properties. Just leave everything as is.

Now that you’re up and running, right click in the main window and select “Add Entry” and for the Title, put “Straight Dope Message Board.” For the “User name” put “aruvqan” and for the “Password” put in your password for here. If the “Password” box is already full, just delete that and put in your password for here. That automatic new password is there in case you need it for when you’re creating a login for a new site.

Then type in the url for here and click “Ok” and you’ve created and saved a new entry!

Now you’re at the peeps house and you slip in your stick, so to speak, and you open KeePass and log in with your “Master Password” and you see the entry for “Straight Dope Message Board” and you have two basic ways to use it.

You can right click on it and select what you need from the menu, like “Open URL” and then once that opens in a browser, you go back to KeePass and right click and select “Copy User Name” and then come back to the browser and Paste it in the appropriate box and ditto for your Password.

The easier way is that when you see the entry for Straight Dope in KeePass, you can simply drag and drop the entries to where you need them. You can drag the “URL” into a browser address bar and then drag the User Name and Password to their appropriate boxes in the web page you’ve opened.

It’s a bit of a pain to use, but that’s the price for true portability and not having to install anything.

Hope this helps!

3

So it won’t autofill like the password manager in firefox? Hm … a bit of an extra step, but workable. Thanks=)

4

KeePass does have a feature called auto-type. The default is to fill in the username, tab to the next field, then fill in the password.

  1. Bring up page with the login.
  2. Position cursor in the userid field.
  3. switch to KeePass.
  4. click on KeePass entry for the site.
  5. Press ctl-v.

You can also define custom autotypes for each login if the default doesn’t work, e.g., on stupid webpages where tabbing from the userid field does not get you to the password field.

5

There are plug-ins for Firefox and Chrome that will automatically fill in username/pw from KeePass. They take a little work setting up but work fine afterwards.

6

[del]This is what i was going to say. I use the KeePass plugins with portable browsers, and it works just fine.

If you don’t want to install a plugin, you can always just log in to KeePass through the browser itself. Once you’re in your online KeePass account, you can get access to all of your sites, passwords, etc.

KeePass is awesome. All of my accounts now have long, complicated passwords that i could never remember individually. All i have to do is remember one long, complicated password to get into KeePass.[/del]

Edit: Scratch all that. I use LastPass, not KeePass. I used to use KeePass, but prefer LastPass. Sorry. I got the names confused.