How to import a private key into Electrum client?

matt188

newbie

Activity: 14

Merit: 0

Quote from: scintill on May 09, 2013, 07:54:15 PM

Looks like he got his answer on the Electrum subforum -- he was using a seedless (watch-only) wallet, and they don't support importing privkeys.

Yep, the seedless wallet was the problem.

Quote from: scintill on May 09, 2013, 07:54:15 PM

While trying to see if I could reproduce it on Mac OS, I have found that the binary package for download on electrum.org doesn't seem to support 32-bit systems like my 2007-era macbook, though. Is this a known issue?

I wasn't able to run the binary from electrum.org on my old Dell Mini 10v hackintosh which was stuck on OS X v10.6.8.

Wasn't sure if it was a 32-bit thing or just due to the old version of OS X, I ended up just putting Ubuntu on instead. Anyway sounds like the same problem you had.

matt188

newbie

Activity: 14

Merit: 0

Quote from: DannyHamilton on May 09, 2013, 10:02:21 AM

What operating system are you using, I think I read somewhere that the behavior of importing private keys is different on different operating systems?

I tried on Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.8.3 with seedless wallets.

Have just tried on my netbook with a seeded wallet and was able to successfully import the private key.

heartuu2013

newbie

Activity: 11

Merit: 0

Thanks, will take it to the Electrum forum. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't doing something too newbish Grin

scintill

sr. member

Activity: 448

Merit: 254

Looks like he got his answer on the Electrum subforum -- he was using a seedless (watch-only) wallet, and they don't support importing privkeys.

While trying to see if I could reproduce it on Mac OS, I have found that the binary package for download on electrum.org doesn't seem to support 32-bit systems like my 2007-era macbook, though. Is this a known issue?

DannyHamilton

legendary

Activity: 3472

Merit: 4801

What operating system are you using, I think I read somewhere that the behavior of importing private keys is different on different operating systems?

matt188

newbie

Activity: 14

Merit: 0

Thanks, will take it to the Electrum forum. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't doing something too newbish

Mitchell

copper member

Activity: 3948

Merit: 2201

Verified awesomeness ✔

Quote from: matt188 on May 09, 2013, 08:08:51 AM

Hi scintill, thanks for your reply.

Pretty sure there is no bad whitespace added. See this album of screenshots showing what I'm doing: http://imgur.com/a/dqW9Q

Just selected the private key from my forum post again and pasted into the import window.

Re: the wallet address, as this isn't a deterministic wallet my understanding is that I need to supply the wallet address also? Otherwise the wallet address could be anything?

Cheers,

Matt.

Looks correct to me. I don't know why it doesn't work, sorry.

matt188

newbie

Activity: 14

Merit: 0

Hi scintill, thanks for your reply.

Pretty sure there is no bad whitespace added. See this album of screenshots showing what I'm doing: http://imgur.com/a/dqW9Q

Just selected the private key from my forum post again and pasted into the import window.

Re: the wallet address, as this isn't a deterministic wallet my understanding is that I need to supply the wallet address also? Otherwise the wallet address could be anything?

Cheers,

Matt.

scintill

sr. member

Activity: 448

Merit: 254

That just worked for me. Are you sure you're not putting any extra characters or whitespace into the import box?

This looks like the right format. You do not need to specify the address; it can be computed by Electrum from the private key. You can verify it shows the same as your paper wallet and label it in Electrum if you like.

matt188

newbie

Activity: 14

Merit: 0

I'm wanting to make a paper wallet so tried generating a wallet on bitaddress.org. Here's the result (obviously I'm not going to use this address):

Bitcoin Address:
1GEkrLo9F1NGosabvE3SiiP3PjkNsUZmre

Private Key (Wallet Import Format):
5HpYGkJXKBRk9YgkZFSLgHR9uXsSJUZS4pZm9NHYXjXSE2opMnv

I wanted to test importing it so tried importing the private key with Electrum via the GUI and I always get the following error:

"The following inputs could not be imported:
5HpYGkJXKBRk9YgkZFSLgHR9uXsSJUZS4pZm9NHYXjXSE2opMnv"

Is there a specific format I should be using? Also how can I specify the address?

Topic: How to import a private key into Electrum client? (Read 8483 times)