Can I move my Keychain to a new user account?

Question

Can I move my Keychain to a new user account?

I've been having a few annoying little problems that I believe may be caused by some problem in my User Account that I don't know how to fix. I want to create a new user account, but I want to import my Keychain (and Address book) into the new account (I couldn't have logged into this site without my Keychain!)

Can this be done?

(Because it might be asked, the problems I've been having with this account are: any time the "Media Brownser" button is touched in MS Office, the Office app crashes [Office Support Communities says it's a problem with my user account] and other apps can't seem to add contextual menu items [Dropbox, Google Notifyer].)

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), MacBook Pro 2.2 Ghz, 3Gb RAM

Posted on Nov 9, 2011 11:43 AM

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Answer 1

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

Nov 9, 2011 3:42 PM in response to Jason Walker1

I don't know about Address Book, since I don't use it, but no you can't transfer the keychain stuff. Better is to resolve you current issue. Step one, create a new admin user account, log into it, and see if the problems persist.

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Answer 2

pnutster

Level 1

27 points

Nov 9, 2011 7:27 PM in response to Jason Walker1

Yes you can backup and restore (import) Keychain and Address Book.

I would advise to have a look here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2980?viewlocale=en_US

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Answer 3

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

Nov 9, 2011 9:04 PM in response to pnutster

That's a three-year old Tiger document and is specifically designed to RESTORE these items, not use them in another account with different username and password.

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Answer 4

Nov 10, 2011 11:02 AM in response to baltwo

I have previously confirmed that the errors are isolated to my user account by creating a new account. I've not been able to find a way to repair whatever it is that's wrong with my original account.

My hope was that there was a way to "restore" the keychain to a new account that would be duplicative of the old one, perhaps by deleting the old account, creating one that's identical (but empty) then restoring items to it selectively.

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Answer 5

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

Nov 10, 2011 11:11 AM in response to Jason Walker1

That's doable. Just ensure that you save the bad account's data when deleting it. That's stored in /Users/Deleted Users/ inside a disk image.

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Answer 6

Nov 10, 2011 3:51 PM in response to Jason Walker1

Sure you can copy a keychain. They are located at ~/Library/Keychains. If the new user already has a keychain you don't want to replace, you can put the copied one anywhere you want, or rename it. If you do that, then import it using Keychain Access, File > Add Keychain…. Regardless of what it is named, the keychain will retain its old password, and will not open automatically if the new user password is different.

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Answer 7

dgrassi

Level 1

26 points

Jun 19, 2012 5:24 PM in response to Jeffrey Jones2

🙂 @Jeffrey Jones2 Worked, really simple, no problems! Thanks! I was afraid there was some encryption locking them to a specific Mac

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