um, you mean let the client wallet open it? Is there no way to see what the private keys are that are stored in the wallet.dat file or it always needs to be opened via the client & if so can one see the private keys on the client? Many thanks for the quick reply.
If you want to see them you can use the RPC command window and use dumpriv or you can use pywallet, the wallet.dat isn't readable thru any other means.
Ah OK many thanks that explains why I haven't been able to get to them as yet, I shall look in to those options & try to learn how to work them - I'm really only used to blockchain.info wallet where one can see the private keys & export them easily without needing high tech knowledge, mostly I want to find this out for use with the litecoin client wallet where there aren't alternatives atm otherwise I probably wouldn't bother.
I guess that maybe it would be simpler for me to just duplicate the whole client wallet in order to back it up but I prefer to know the actual private keys to the addresses where I place funds though the client wallet will just create new addresses & move change to them if you use it which I wish could be disabled by choice, anyway interesting to learn a little more of how it all works.