How do you import an Armory paper wallet to another wallet?

[playanaut]

Okay, I'm in a real pickle. I've now spent 3 weeks trying to recover my coins stored in an Armory wallet. I have an unencrypted paper wallet with *root key*. Here's my problem:

Armory will not work on any computer I install it on. The original installation has fatally crashed, and I've since installed it on three additional computers, and two operating systems. I've run into every problem conceivable - whether it's the bitcoin core database becoming corrupted at "46 weeks left", or Armory giving executable errors and crashing my computer. After multiple installs, new hard drives, nothing has worked. So at this point, RECOVERING MY BITCOIN USING ARMORY PROPER IS *NOT* AN OPTION.

I've Googled and searched everywhere and I cannot find a solution that does not require some kind of serious programming experience. I saw one forum that had a bunch of code, with no instructions at all on how to make use of it. Clearly the author of that post simply assumes you are already a programmer. I can follow any kind of directions, even technical directions, as long as they are very precise and explanatory. So,


QUESTION: How does one recover an Armory paper wallet and the coins inside without Armory?


As an aside, I'm shocked that Armory creates paper wallets that are completely dependent on a functioning online Armory running which includes having the entire 30GB (and growing!) blockchain, rather than paper wallets that can be restored by any wallet or standard encryption.

Cheers,
~P

[etotheipi]

As an aside, I'm shocked that Armory creates paper wallets that are completely dependent on a functioning online Armory running which includes having the entire 30GB (and growing!) blockchain, rather than paper wallets that can be restored by any wallet or standard encryption.

You're confusing the paper backup and bitcoin private keys. 

- The paper backup is a seed that allows you to recover every private key ever created and will ever be created by your wallet.  It's called a "deterministic wallet," and Armory was the first wallet to implement that which is why it's not compatible with anything else.
- The individual private keys are what hold the actual money.  Those are derived from the paper backup.  Backing those up only backup the coins they currently hold, but don't help you if you use more addresses.

In your case, you want the private keys.  Start Armory in offline mode (there's usually a shortcut installed with it specifically for offline mode).  Then load the Armory wallet and go to backup options.  "Export Key Lists".  There you can get the first 100 raw private keys that can be imported into another app (you might have to click "Include unused" since Armory will think that all the addresses are currently unused).