# KeePassX Quick-start Guide

This guide helps you to manage your passwords efficiently and securely with KeePassX.

## Starting up

After starting KeePassX for the first time, you are presented with the main window with no open database file. If you have used KeePassX (or KeePass Classic on Windows) previously, you can open your existing database. Otherwise we begin with creating a new password database.

## Creating a new password database

KeePassX stores your password entries into a password database file when the it's not running. To create a new password database, click the "New Database" icon on the program toolbar (it is the first icon from the left on the toolbar).

Second, you need to set the master key for the password database. This key is used to encrypt (ie. lock) the password database so it cannot be read by anybody else but you. The master key can be a password or a key file or both. If you check both, you must provide both the password and the key file to every time you want to unlock the database.

If you decide to use a password, choose and protect it carefully . The password should be strong, ie. long enough (at least 8 characters) and preferably contain lower and uppercase characters, numbers and special characters (e.g. !#?). You should also memorize the password well, because if you forget it, there is no way retrieving it later from the locked database. You will be asked to give the password twice to ensure that there is no typing errors in the password.

The key file can be any file on your computer, e.g. a picture or a text document. You can also create a randomly-generated key file by first selecting the key file check box and clicking "Generate Key File...". You can store the key file for example on a USB memory stick, to keep it with you everywhere.

## Adding password entries

After you have created or opened a database, you can add password entries to the database. A password entry essentially consists of a title, user name and password. It may have other entries as well, such as URL (Internet link) and comments. To add a new password entry, select a group from the list on the left first, then click the "Add New Entry" icon on the program toolbar.

In the "New Entry" dialog you can enter the information you want to into respective text boxes. If you are creating a new account to e.g. a web forum, you can use the password generator to generate strong random passwords for you.

## Saving the database

If you have added or edited entries in your database, they are not automatically save to the database file by default. You can save the database by clicking the "Save Database" icon.

You may also want to enable "Automatically save database after every change" option from the "Extras" > "Settings..." > "General (2)" page. (On OS X, the page is found from "KeePassX" (Application menu) > "Preferences".)

## Opening a database

By default, on next startup, KeePassX opens a "Enter Master Key" dialog for the last used password database. If you wish to open another password database, click "Cancel" and click "Open Database" icon on the program toolbar and select the wanted password database file from the file system. You can, of course, do this at any point when the KeePassX main window is active.

## Editing and removing password entries

If you wish to edit a password entry, you can do so by double-clicking on the entry title, or by selecting the entry and then clicking the "View/Edit Entry" icon on the program toolbar.

To delete a password entry, first select the entry and click "Delete Entry" icon on the program toolbar or hit `Ctrl-D` (`Cmd+D` on OS X) on the keyboard.

## Copying password (and user name) to the clipboard

You can copy the currently selected password by hitting `Ctrl-C` (`Cmd-C` on OS X) and user name with `Ctrl-B` (`Cmd-B` on OS X) on the keyboard. Then you can hit `Ctrl-V` (`Cmd-V` on OS X) to paste the password or username to any program that supports pasting from the clipboard.

## Setup Auto-Type (currently Linux only)

Auto-Type is a feature that allows you to e.g. log in to web page by hitting only one key combination. KeePassX does the rest of the typing for you. Auto-Type reads the title of currently active window on your screen and matches it to the configured database entries. If a matching window title is found from the password database, it executes a predefined key sequence (by default your username, `TAB`, password, `ENTER`) in the active window. This feature is currently available in the Linux version only.

To enable Auto-Type, first go to "Extras" > "Settings..." > "Advanced" page and set the "Global Auto-Type Shortcut" by clicking the text box and typing the desired keyboard shortcut (e.g. `Ctrl-Shift-N`). Click "OK" to exit the dialog.

Then, for example, open the web page where you want to be able to log in with Auto-Type. Let's for example open Google.com into Firefox and try to do automated search with Auto-Type. Go to Google.com in Firefox and you'll notice that your window title is now "Google - Mozilla Firefox"

Now, create new password entry, that contains user name "test". Then, click the small "Tools" button at the bottom of the "New Entry" dialog, and select "Auto-Type: Select target window" Select "Google - Mozilla Firefox" from the dropdown menu and click "OK". You should see now a new line in the "Comment:" box, which reads:
`Auto-Type-Window: Google - Mozilla Firefox`
Now you have associated that window title to this entry.

Finally, let's customize the Auto-Type key sequence to just enter your username and hit `ENTER`. Click again "Tools" and select "Auto-Type: Customize Sequence". Now there's another new line in the "Comment:" box, which reads:
`Auto-Type: {USERNAME}{TAB}{PASSWORD}{ENTER}`
Change this line to:
`Auto-Type: {USERNAME}{ENTER}`
So that it would just type in your username and hit `ENTER`. Click "OK" to save the entry.

Now, you can test the Auto-Type by returning to the Firefox window and hitting the global Auto-Type keyboard shortcut (e.g. `Ctrl-Shift-N`) in it. If everything went correctly, KeePassX should now enter "test" in the search box and start the search query by hitting `ENTER`.

By modifing the Auto-Type key sequence you can tailor Auto-Type to suit almost every web login page you'll enter.