Topic: [Electrum] How can I add a new address having the private key? (Read 617 times)

it was a newly created wallet last week to which I did use the import private key.

as for the part you got lost on - sorry, I was importing multiple private keys from core, but they were different formats (1, 3, b) so when I was importing them to Electrum it was using different public addresses than the ones that had transactions so the amounts that involved multiple public addresses were being reflected incorrectly by Electrum.

when I added the part stated by

in front of the private keys, it then did bring in the right addresses and the transactions are all reflecting correctly.



corrected it by using the method as described by Csmiami

i have never encountered this issue and i have imported both addresses (as watch only) and private keys (full wallet capabilities) in Electrum many times and all the history of all addresses show up correctly in the History tab.

are you sure your client is already in full sync with the network? if you had a very large number of transaction history it could take some time for the node you connect to to send back all that history that should then be written to disk. Electrum is also known to be slow when the wallet size becomes big.

i'm curious what the addresses you imported were. for example how many transactions did each of them have? and were these transactions made recently or many years ago?

If it's an 'imported' wallet created using "Import Bitcoin addresses or Private keys",
Electrum will always allow you to add more private keys to that wallet.

If it's another type of wallet, please verify your Electrum's signature to make sure that it's not a fake.

Honestly, you lost me at the last paragraph.

But if the issue is the history and the transactions and balance are somehow fetched correctly;
Check if you've set a "filter" before, a drop-down menu should be displayed above the history, select "All";
if there's none, then it's disabled. Use "Wallet->History->Filter" to re-enable it.

I have a wallet created with 3.3.8 and it allows me to import as many private addresses as i want (most was 9)

though I only see transaction history for the first one I imported - the others, I have to go to "addresses" and click details on each address to see the txns

Not sure if this is because I imported them at different times or not

I am curious if i delete all the wallets and start from scratch if it will import all the txns. I will need to export my history first though so I can keep the descriptions I used. would hate to have to look them all up again and try to remember what each one was for all over again lol


nope - history only shows the one address transactions vs all the transactions for all the addresses for all the private keys I imported (5 private keys all imported at same time)


edit: while it did load only the txns from the primary address - the amounts now match core as it appears to have adjusted the amounts. prior to this import, any transaction that also sent balance to a "change" address showed a higher "amount" as it would include the amount sent, the txn fee and the amount sent to the change address - now it does not show the amount sent to the change address - but I can see those still when i go to "addresses" and click on a change address and view "details" so this works for me!

Seems like after 2.0, people are still able to import private keys to deterministic wallets if the wallet is made by older versions:
Wallet name: Made_by_1.9.5

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But if the wallet is created by 2.0 and above, the "import" private key button will be grayed out unclickable:
Wallet name: Made_by_v2.0

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Newer versions behave the same except for the latest ones which hides the button entirely instead of graying-it-out.

Not 100% sure on that... doesn't seem to be anything specific regarding this in the historical release notes...

But, I believe that the last version that supported importing private keys into a "HD" wallet was 1.9.8... so it was when the upgrade to version 2.0 happened that the ability to import keys to an HD wallet was removed.

I've heard that older versions of Electrum's HD wallets allowed importing of private keys.  Does anyone recall what version of Electrum discontinued the ability to import private keys into an HD wallet?  I can see how this probably caused a lot of confusion for people who expected to be able to restore their wallets in full with nothing but their seed phrase, and later found out they no longer had access to any of the private keys that were imported in previous installs.

keep in mind that when you import an keypair in Electrum you no longer have an HD wallet (a wallet type where you can recover all keys by only having the seed phrase) and have to still have backups of every individual private key in case you no longer had access to that particular wallet file. in fact this is why Electrum forces you to create a new and separate wallet.

Thank you, it worked like a charm.

It has to be emphasized that with Sweep you don't add that private key to your actual wallet so you won't be able to "prove ownership" if others ask for it.
Sweep only creates a transaction that'll move those coins to this wallet.

For "adding private key" and proper ownership proving the "new/import" is the proper way.
Of course, import also doesn't mean addition to current wallet, it's creation of new wallet, but you'll be able to use it in Electrum.


If you already have a wallet in Electrum, you should do File->New/Restore.
And when you'll have 2 or more wallets you can switch between them with File->Open

If you want to add your private key to an existing wallet then I am afraid it is not possible. You can either 'Sweep' which tells Electrum to move those coins automatically to your wallet via a transaction or create a new wallet and select 'Import Bitcoin addresses or private keys'.

New wallet---Import Bitcoin address or Private key---Paste the private key, with it's type:

To import a Legacy address (1...) , p2pkh:
To import a Nested segwit address (3...), p2wpkh-p2sh:
To import a Native segwit address (bc...), p2wpkh:

Sign the message on Tools---Sign/Verify

Hello I have my private key. How can I prove my ownership of my address to electrum? I don't see any insert button...