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Is there any way to recover old passwords in Firefox?

  • 4 respostas
  • 2 have this problem
  • 3 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

rjhenn
rjhenn
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I use both an external password manager and Firefox's built in password manager. The built in manager doesn't seem to keep a history of old passwords like the external one does.

Recently I tried to sign in at a website, entering the password through the external manager and clicked on the update password button that Firefox threw at me before the site told me that I used the wrong password. So now I'm thinking that the right password was in Firefox, and I just overlaid it.

Is there any way to get Firefox to cough up the old password?

I use both an external password manager and Firefox's built in password manager. The built in manager doesn't seem to keep a history of old passwords like the external one does. Recently I tried to sign in at a website, entering the password through the external manager and clicked on the update password button that Firefox threw at me before the site told me that I used the wrong password. So now I'm thinking that the right password was in Firefox, and I just overlaid it. Is there any way to get Firefox to cough up the old password?

All Replies (4)

Swarnava Sengupta
Swarnava Sengupta
  • Locale Leader
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If you set master password but you forgot and want to recover yet, See:

If you saved a password on Firefox password Manager and want to view it. At the top of the Firefox window, click on the Firefox button (Tools menu in Windows XP) and then click Options 

   Click the Security panel.
   Click Saved Passwords... and the Password Manager will open.5

   To see the passwords you have saved, click Show Passwords. When you close the window, your passwords will be automatically hidden.
   Use the search box to find a particular website or username. Click the X in the search bar to clear your search and see the full list again. See:
cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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This can also be caused by corrupted cookies.

Clear the cache and the cookies from sites that cause problems.

"Clear the Cache":

  • Tools > Options > Advanced > Network > Cached Web Content: "Clear Now"

"Remove Cookies" from sites causing problems:

  • Tools > Options > Privacy > Cookies: "Show Cookies"

You can check if there are entries in the password manager with an empty user name.
Make sure that you haven't saved multiple (uppercase, lowercase) versions of that name and password.

  • Tools > Options > Security: Passwords: "Saved Passwords" > "Show Passwords"
rjhenn
rjhenn Question owner
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No, guys, those aren't the problem I'm having. I accidentally updated an existing password with an invalid password. I'm wondering if there's any way to get the old password back from Firefox.

The external password manager that I'm also using lets me optionally keep a record of previous passwords, so there's the current password, then a -1 generation, a -2 generation, etc.. That's something that seems to be missing from Firefox, but I'm wondering if there's some non-obvious way to get a previous password back.

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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You could try to restore a previous version of the signons.sqlite database file.

Use the Password Exporter extension to make a backup of the current passwords (check that you actually have them in the backup file) and restore the passwords afterward.

cor-el modificouno o