If you are like most people, password organization is probably one of those
things that's been on your to-do list since Two Thousand And FOREVER!
If that's the case, then be sure to stay tuned, because today I'm
going to teach you an easy to follow workflow that will have all of your
passwords organized in no time.
This works on both Mac and windows and best of all, the only piece of software
that you're going to need for this is one that you probably already own.
How to organize your passwords coming up next on Tech Talk America.
Hey folks, this video is partially a follow-up to last week's class.
In that tutorial, I taught you how to create a digital will
by assigning a legacy contact.
That way, one day, when you pass away, there's a plan for what
to do with your digital assets.
Most importantly, your photos.
Now, one of the topics that came up in that video was that Apple does not give
your loved ones access to keychain data
which contains all of your saved usernames and passwords.
In my opinion, I felt like Apple should have at least made it optional
whether or not to include that data because I frequently work with
people who have lost loved ones.
These people have just gone through a horrible trauma and now they have to
relive that trauma as they go through the horribly painful process of trying
to figure out how to get into all of their loved one's accounts and deal with
each of those accounts appropriately..
I bring this up because when you're done watching this class, one of the things
that you'll end up with is a clean and easy to read document that has a list
of all of your usernames and passwords.
If you want to make your own death a lot less painful for those you leave behind,
I strongly recommend that you give that document to the person that you designate
as your digital executor or your lawyer.
Two of the most common password related problems that people encounter
are reusing the same passwords.
And if you use more than one web browser, you may have discovered
that you have different passwords stored in different browsers, which
makes it very difficult to remember which one has the most recent data.
Another big problem that people encounter is not knowing where
to store their passwords.
Do you keep it in a web browser or do you use a dedicated password saving
app like 1Password or Last Pass?
Now this may come as a surprise to some of you, but I am not actually going
to make a specific recommendation.
And the reason why is because the best solution for you should be based
on a combination of what devices you own and what web browser you use.
So here's how this video works.
What I'm going to do is teach you how to extract all of the stored
usernames and password data out of all of your different web browsers.
Then what we're going to do is merge all of that data together
into one central document.
Specifically a spreadsheet.
Why a spreadsheet you ask?
Well, it makes it a lot easier to visualize many of the most common
problems that people encounter, including duplicate usernames and passwords,
dead accounts, old passwords, and it even presents a perfect opportunity to
update all of those reused passwords.
I'm speaking specifically....
to all of you.
And then I'm going to teach you a bunch of tricks to help clean up that list.
And when all is said and done, we can use that document to replace whatever password
data that you currently have stored again, in whatever web browser you use.
And that way everything's updated.
I know you hate long intros and I do too.
So without any further ado, let's begin the class.
As I said, a moment ago, the first step in this process is we need to now go into
each web browser and export all of the password data into a central spreadsheet.
I'm going to walk you through this process on both safari and Chrome.
And if you use something else, the process is similar.
If you use Safari, I want you to go into preferences.
And at the top left, I want you to click on the password tab.
You'll now need to enter in your admin password, or some of you will
be able to use your fingerprint.
I now want you to click on the three dots icon here at the bottom
left and select export passwords.
I'm going to rename this document safari passwords, just to make it
a little bit easier to identify.
And then I'm going to save that document to my Desktop.
If you're a Google Chrome user, the process is somewhat similar.
Just go into preferences and then click on auto-fill.
And now click on passwords.
I'm now going to click on the three dots icon right over here, and
then click on export passwords.
Once again, I'm going to save this file to my desktop and make sure that the
document is named Chrome passwords.
The next thing that I recommend you do is pick either one of
these documents and duplicate it.
Mac users.
You can use command D as in David windows, users, it's control D.
Now let's rename this document, merged passwords.
I am now going to open the document that we did not duplicate, and I'm going to
start by selecting all of the rows that contain data, except the very top one.
You're now going to want to copy that data to the clipboard.
So Mac owners, command C windows, users, control C I'm now going to close that
spreadsheet and open up the one that we just created called merged passwords.
And the first thing that I'm going to do is go to the bottom of this document.
Click into the first empty cell at the bottom, and then paste
the data that we just copied.
Mac users, command V windows, users, control V.
And just like that, we have merged the data from both documents.
And now that we've merged, let's purge.
Now, obviously all of the data that you're seeing on my screen is fake,
but what I've done here is recreate some of the most common password
issues that you may encounter.
Let's start by organizing everything by website URL.
So I'm going to click here at the very top of the second column and
sort everything in ascending order.
There's clearly a lot going on here.
And I think the best place to start is by deleting any rows that
correspond with dead accounts, that is accounts that you don't use anymore.
To do that.
I'm now going to hold down the command key PC users use control,
and now I'm going to select all of the rows that contain dead accounts.
Then I'm going to secondary click PC users, right click,
and then select delete rows.
The next thing I want you to look for are any cells here under usernames or
passwords that are currently blank.
Do you ever go to sign into a website and discover that the autofill feature
does correctly fill in the password, but not the username or maybe vice versa?
If that's the case, you'll probably discover a blank spot
next to that website in thislist.
So, all you have to do is add back in that username password, or maybe email
address, and later on when we re upload this list so that replaces the old
list; that shouldn't be an issue in the future, in the process of making this
video and testing out this workflow,
I have to tell you that it was significantly more difficult to try to
do this using Numbers, which is made by Apple compared to Microsoft Excel.
So for those of you who happen to have both, I would absolutely
recommend that you stick with Excel.
Speaking of.
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I have a feeling you guys are gonna really love this next trick.
You've probably noticed that some websites start with HTTP, whereas
others use HTTPS the difference is HTTPS uses TLS, which stands for
transport layer security to encrypt normal HTTP requests and responses.
So it's a good idea to use that with every website.
Hmm.
If only there was a way to change every single website from HTTP to HTTPS.
You do know where this is going, right?
Mac users, command F PC users control F.
This is where the find and replace tool is a major time saver.
Let's click on the gear icon and then switch it from find to find and replace.
Now, all you need to do is tell it to replace every instance of
HTTP colon with HTTP S colon.
Going back to what I mentioned earlier.
Here's another example of a bug that I encountered in numbers.
You see how all of these buttons are grayed out, no matter what I do?
Yeah, Excel's better.
Did I mention you can save 20% off any version of office with my coupon code?
Just checking!
Here's another common example of something that you might encounter.
You see all of these entries for chase bank's website, but they
all have different URLs that tends to happen on websites that
allow you to log in from any page.
All you have to do is delete everything you see after the.com.
Let's now start to work on those reused passwords.
Let's click the column that contains all of the passwords
and sort it in ascending order.
That way, all of the reuse passwords will be grouped together.
Some of you may have a column just beyond passwords called notes.
I'm going to temporarily rename that column, updated passwords.
I'm now going to go through each cell that is next to a reused password, and
I'm going to fill it with a bunch of random letters, numbers, and symbols.
The next step is we can click on the URL next to these sites and navigate to the
page where you can update that password.
Now, all I need to do is copy and paste the new password that
I just created into where it's asking me to create a new password.
After you have your list perfected, we then need to make sure that
we can save it as a CSV file.
So from here, I'm going to go to"file"...
Export to, and I'll select CSV.
I'm going to rename this file, updated passwords, and just to avoid any
confusion, I'm going to delete all of the other documents from my desktop.
The next step is we now need to wipe out all of the old passwords
so that we can replace it with the CSV file that we just created.
If you're on Safari, go back into preferences and head
over to the passwords tab.
Then press command A on your keyboard to select all and then select the minus
symbol here at the bottom to remove them.
Let's now click the three dots icon next to it.
And this time we're going to select import passwords and point it
to my new updated password file.
For those of you who use Google Chrome, this process is a bit different.
So let's walk through it.
The first thing that we need to do is wipe out the old password data to do that.
We're going to click on where it says Chrome at the top left
and select clear browsing data.
If we head over to the advanced tab,
let's change this first option to all time, you will find the option to delete
passwords and other sign in data to import the CSV file that we just created, I
want you to go to passwords.google.com and then click on this little gear icon
that you see at the top right here at the bottom of this next screen is the option
to import password data from a CSV file.
There is one last trick that I would like to teach you in this video and
this one is specifically for any of you out there who have lost a loved one
and are now going through the process of trying to close out those accounts,
instead of trying to sort out their affairs from your own user account,
what I recommend that you do is create a second user account on the same computer.
That way you can keep things separate, so that usernames and passwords don't
cross over onto your personal side and muck up your entire keychain.
I realized that many of you at home may have a lot of questions that you have
formulated over the course of this video.
And trust me, I get it.
It's complicated stuff.
I worked really hard when I was putting together this video to try to craft it
into just the most important information.
If you would like to book a one hour tech therapy session with me, please visit
my website at TechTalkAmerica.com and I would be happy to work with you and
answer any questions that you may have.
So some of you out there may have been wondering why I'm not making
quite as many videos as I use to, and part of it is I have developed over
the years, really bad carpal tunnel.
And that has come to slow me down, especially during the editing
process of these videos, which is a major part of the time commitment.
I'm also in a new relationship, which is really great news, and I'm starting
to just get to enjoy life more.
So I'm not going anywhere.
I'm just releasing content a little bit more at my own pace.
If you enjoyed this video, please be sure to take a quick moment
to hit the like button and leave me a little comment down below.
If you'd like to support my YouTube channel or just say, thank you,
or just buy me a digital beer, you can send it to my Venmo account
or PayPal links down below.
Thank you so much for watching everyone.
This is David A.
Cox with Tech Talk America.
Class dismissed.