How do I transfer Keychain Secure Notes?

Question

Level 1

9 points

How do I transfer Keychain Secure Notes?

I've migrated from one smaller drive to a larger one...in Lion...not very easy any more...after my original drive had a bad sector that wouldn't allow login but would allow copying with carbon copy cloner (CCC). Because of this I couldn't do a current Time Machine backup. After a successful CCC backup, the drive started functioning again and I was able to log into my account and do a successful Time Machine backup. (I guess this is beside the point...but just history).

I migrated from the backup to the new larger drive. After I'd completed all of the software updates, I opened Keychain and found that it had not transferred properly. I copied the original Keychains folder from ~/home/Library folder and then logged into the original drive to install it in the new drive as Keychain was employed otherwise. I copied the original file into the new loctation and booted up again into the new drive.

I launched Keychain in the new drive again...and found that all of my many secure notes (about 40 or 50) were not there. How can I transfer all of these important detailed secure notes easily? Did I not transfer the correct files? Is there another file to be transferred? ...possibly a db file or something else?

Many thanks for all who contribute. ;-)

Posted on Mar 4, 2012 11:33 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Jun 23, 2015 6:53 PM in response to baltwo

I have the same problem. I have 170 Secure Notes - great place to keep them BTW - but now I have a new Mac after 5 years I wish to transfer the Secure Notes.

Any solution? An Applescript?

I tried the above but Notes not copied over.

Thank you.

Reply

Answer 2

jc.p Author

Level 1

9 points

Mar 4, 2012 12:20 PM in response to baltwo

Thanks for your reply...but as I said: "I copied the original Keychains folder from ~/home/Library folder"

The notes are still in the original drive when I boot from it...and not in the new one.

Thanks. I'll take both to a genius appointment tomorrow to see what is going on.

Reply

Answer 3

Sep 28, 2015 9:37 AM in response to jc.p

Yes. This can be done.

The simple solution is to copy the user keychain to a folder that can be viewed by both accounts. From the new use account, then you add the keychain "Add Keychain"

Folder - </User/username/Libary/username.keychain>

This did not work for me.

I created a new keychain <username 1.keychain> on the original user account in keychain . I selected all secure notes and copied them to the new keychain. I had to manually type in the password for each secure note. Ouch. From there, I copied the new keychain to a folder that I could see from the new user account. From the new user account, I added the new keychain <username 1.keychain> and all of the secure notes migrated over just fine.

Hope this helps.

Reply

Answer 4

Nov 10, 2015 6:48 AM in response to jc.p

I followed the steps on Cult of Mac with the added step of renaming the keychain after I copied the file to the new computer but before I used Keychain Access to File->Add Keychain. It worked without problem. I'm on Mac OS 10.10.5 (Yosemite), though.

Reply