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Guides Forgot your passphrase

Keep your notes safe

Forgot your passphrase

Use the recovery key you saved when you set up Nectenda to choose a new passphrase. Your notes and shared folders are unaffected.

Your passphrase is never sent to Nectenda, so nobody here can reset it. The recovery key you saved when you set it up is the way back, and it is the only one.

Before you start

  • Your recovery key. It looks like XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX.
  • The email address you sign in with.

Steps

  1. Open Settings and choose Nectenda.
  2. Choose Forgot passphrase?:
    • if you are signed in and your folders are locked, it is on the Security page (under More), in Encryption, beside Enter passphrase;
    • if you are signed out, type your address in Email on the sign-in screen first, then choose Forgot passphrase? at the foot of it.
  3. In Recover with your recovery key, type the key in Recovery key. Capitals and dashes do not matter.
  4. Type a new passphrase in New passphrase and again in Confirm new passphrase, at least eight characters.
  5. Choose Recover.
  6. You are shown a new recovery key. Save it as you did the first, then choose I've saved it. The old one no longer works.

Check the result

A notice confirms it, and your shared folders open again. Recovering does not change your encryption key, so everything shared with you stays readable, and the fingerprint your collaborators compared stays the same.

Troubleshooting

It says the recovery key was not accepted

Check each group of the key again. If it still fails, make sure you typed the email address you signed up with.

I have lost the recovery key too

Then the notes cannot be decrypted by anyone, including us. The notes already in your vault are ordinary files and are unaffected. To go on collaborating, a new account is needed, and the folder owners share their folders with it again.

  • Choose your passphrase and save your recovery keyYour passphrase makes the keys that encrypt your notes, and nobody can reset it. Choose one, then save the recovery key that is your only way back.
  • Sign inConnect a vault to Nectenda with a passkey, a code sent to your email, or your Google, Apple or Microsoft account. Your passphrase is never part of it.
  • Compare encryption keysCheck that the key you share a folder with really belongs to your collaborator, by comparing fingerprints outside Nectenda, and what a changed key means.