Bitcoin Forum

Hi,

is there a way to find out an address/balance of an electrum wallet even if this wallet is password locked?
I found a wallet but I think there is nothing in it, but I want to check it somehow first.

Regards

You can try opening it in a text editor I think - and it'll appear in a json format if it's not an encrypted file (and just contains encrypted sections) .

If it is encrypted it'll likely begin with a U and end in either a + or an =.

You can either encrypt the file fully (which is enabled by default) or only encrypt the keys.

It doesn't hurt to just try to open it first.

if it is encrypted fully then I cannot extract other general information like the address right?
I need the password then I guess?

Yes. The full encryption means the wallet software encrypts everything there is in that wallet file and only stores the encrypted result on disk. To see any human readable content the file has to be decrypted first using the correct password.

That's the problem if you don't have the correct password of this wallet you can't able to check or open this wallet because every time you open this wallet with Electrum it will ask for a password before you can open it.

https://i.imgur.com/aKNONBd.png

If you want to find the right password there is a way to find the correct password but I'm sure it's a long journey before you can guess the password. They mostly called it Bruteforce we have a link to this tool to brute-force the password you can check it from this link below.

- https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover

The wallet file encryption became a default setting since version 2.8. If your wallet was created prior to that then there is a chance that only the seed was encrypted and all other info such as wallet addresses and their transactions history can be retrieved.
Just do what jackg suggested. Open the wallet file in a text editor to see if it was partially or fully encrypted.
If the whole document looks gibberish then it was fully encrypted and there is no way to retrieve the wallet addresses without the password.

If you are not successful with a text editor, then I would recommend that you try to remember the way BTC got into that wallet, because every transaction is visible on the blockchain. Try to remember one of the following :

• Have you ever bought BTC via crypto exchange? Log in and check your transactions.
• Do you have any of your addresses saved in text format, e-mail or cloud?
• Try to remember your password, it may be similar to the ones you use today - people are often slaves to habits.
• You can always try this service (https://www.walletrecoveryservices.com/), a man has a great reputation, and you only pay if he manages to unlock your wallet.