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Can I merge two login keychains?

I know there are a lot of key chain posts but I can't quit efind what I want


I have both an old and a new keychain login operating - one which came from an my old computer and one that was set up on teh new one. The old one has most of my passwords and secure notes.


Can they be merged?


they are not duplicate login keychains.


Thanks


osx 10.9

MacBook Air (13-inch Mid 2012), OS X Mavericks (10.9.3)

Posted on May 22, 2014 1:19 AM

Reply
3 replies

Nov 28, 2015 10:17 AM in response to The cragrat

Hi. Found this hint in some other support sites, but haven't yet tried it myself. At least 3 posters confirmed it works.


If you have both old and new KeyChains open by Keychain-Access utility in front of you, you can basically copy and paste items from one to the other.


HOWEVER…

You will have to authenticate for each item separately… which is a very annoying at best, and impractical if you happen to have hundreds of keychain items in your old login keychain.


The trick is --- to set the password to nothing on the destination keychain (the new login keychain created on your new Mac). You set a keychain password (for the new keychain) in the Edit menu of Keychain-Access. It will complain, and even refuse to set an empty password - and you need to Option-click the "OK" button to force it accept an empty password.


Now, when you copy and paste items from old to new keychain, it still opens a dialog, but you only need to click "OK" without authenticating (typing your password) for each item. Saves lots of time, although lots of clicks to go through.


Then --- DO NOT FORGET --- to set the new login's password to the original one, not to lose your security.


I just received my new 27" retina iMac, beautiful and new - I could not use Migration-Assistant to move over my account (my older Mac is just way too old, and contains LOTS of junk back from 1985 !!!) so I wanted to move things one at a time, and got the same situation you are.


I'll add my own feedback on this method tomorrow, when I'm finished.

Can I merge two login keychains?

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