Switching from PasswordSafe to Keepass

I have been using PasswordSafe for a while. It is a handy program and it works well. However, I decided to switch to KeePass to make things a little easier for Tara. PasswordSafe remembers the last open database and sometimes it was mine.

I didn’t really feel like cutting and pasting every field for all my passwords so I started looking at the import export functions for each program. There didn’t seem to be a common format. XML was promising but they didn’t use the same schema and I didn’t want to edit the xml file to match the proper format.

After a quick search, I found the following instructions.

1. Use the Password Safe function to export to CSV file
   (File -> Export To -> Plain Text)
2. Import the text file into KeePass
   (File->Import From->PWSafe v2 TXT file)

This process sort of worked. All of the passwords were imported but some of the names were screwed up and the groups were not imported correctly. I think that happened because I was using version 3.04 of PasswordSafe and KeePass was expecting a version 2.x format to import. I currently have about 25 passwords and I had to fix 8 of them. Also, the url wasn’t put in the proper spot. It was in the notes section instead of the url entry. Despite the importing glitches, it was still quicker than copy/pasting every field for each entry.

For those of you who are more worried about security than I am, you know this is a very insecure method to transfer passwords. For others, you may wish to export the (unencrypted) text file to a Truecrypt partition and/or use Eraser on the text file once you’re finished with it. And don’t do this on a public computer. You never know who might find your passwords.