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New User - Comments & Suggestions

k2ham
2005-09-12
2012-11-20
  • k2ham

    k2ham - 2005-09-12

    Good morning,

    I'm a new user to KeePass and am really enjoying the product. I'm a long time user of Password Agent and spent a good bit of time last week transferring over 600+ entries into KeePass. I primarily am switching over because of the open source nature of KeePass and it appears to be a more actively managed product. Great work on it!

    I have several comments and possible suggestions mainly relating to my past experience and use of Password Agent. I really appreciated several features of the product that might be of benefit/consideration with KeePass. I'm bringing these up as possibilities only, not to suggest any shortcomings in KeePass.

    The features of Password Agent that meant most to me (in approximate order of importance) were:

    1. The ability to select an entry within the password database and then use a hotkey combination to prefill the username/password fields of a web page. I know that KeePass can do this via the Auto-Type-Window feature and I do appreciate it's ability to scan through the entire DB to find the appropriate entry to use. However, the way I used Password Agent was to find the appropriate entry in the DB, click on the URL button to open up the associated browser page, and then hit the hotkey sequence to prefill the fields. This allowed me to have multiple login values for the same web page (e.g., two different email accounts for the same webmail web page). By having Password Agent use the DB entry currently highlighted/focused for the hotkey values, I was able to quickly "force" the program to use the username/password values I wanted in one quick step. I'm not sure how to do this with KeePass since the web page header would be the same for all possible DB entries pointing to that web page. I know I can copy & paste the user name, then the password or drag-and-drop but that is more cumbersome to me. I suppose my suggestion here would be to have the ability to "force" KeePass to use the values for the entry currently selected as the hotkey values rather than always searching through entries for the matching Auto-Type-Window value.

    2. Similar to how I used Password Agent in #1 above, upon selecting the "root" folder in Password Agent you could see all entries in all subordinate folders. In other words, if you wanted to see a listing of all entries just click on the root (or General in KeePass) folder. In KeePass you have to remember something about what you are looking for and use the search feature rather than "eyeball" down the list of entries to find something. While I definitely like and would want to keep the search feature, my suggestion here would be to provide an option (or default) whereby clicking on the 'root' folder shows all entries rather than only those entries that were intentionally placed within the 'root' folder.

    3. A "Take with me" feature. Basically this feature allowed you to easily select a destination for the necessary program and data files and copied them over via a few simply clicks. While we can do the same thing with KeePass by finding and then copying and pasting the KeePass.exe file and database to the desired destination, this feature within Password Agent made the process very simple.

    4. Multiple iterations of the database for backup purposes. Password Agent allowed you to designate, if any, how many backup copies of the database you wanted to keep in case the current database became corrupted, lost, etc. I usually selected three backup copies, thus ending up with the current database and also *.old1, *.old2, and *.old3. Whenever the database was saved the prior database "image/version" was cascaded down.

    5. Prior password field. Whenever you changed an entry's password, Password Agent would record the previous password entry. In other words, you would always be able to see both the current password and the  previous, if any, password. This came in handy several times when I changed a password but forgot to write down the previous one (which was needed by the web site to actually enter a new password).

    6. A feature including drop-down lists for entering custom hotkey entries. This was a convenience feature. Instead of having to refer to the help manual for the proper codes and values for creating and modifying hotkey entries (i.e., similar to KeePass' field codes) entirely freeform, Password Agent allowed you to "build" the hotkey sequence by selecting and inserting desired entries.

    Once again, thanks for a great product. Again, the above comments and suggestions are just provided for consideration, not to imply that I'm disappointed in the product or to solicit a response along the lines of "if you think Password Agent is so great then why don't you just stick with it..." I intend to keep using KeePass and, IMHO, think that these types of features would only enhance the product (after all, they kept me from making the switch before now!).

    Perhaps KeePass already has similar features and I just haven't become familiar enough yet with the product to know it yet. If so, please forgive this long and unecessary posting!

     
    • Paul

      Paul - 2005-09-13

      1. Highlight the entry and press Ctrl-U, or select open URL.
      Wait for your URL to load.
      Alt-Tab to return to KeePass.
      Ctrl-V to auto-type.

      4. There is a backup plug-in that does what you require.

      5. Turn on "save entries in backup group" under advanced.

      cheers, Paul

       
    • k2ham

      k2ham - 2005-09-13

      I figured there was probably a way to do most of this in KeePass that I was just missing. Thanks for the info Paul.

       
    • Nobody/Anonymous

      2. Click into search field and press enter --> You'll get all entries (but unfortunately keepass cannot sort search results)

       

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