How to Retreive Forgotten FTP Passwords from Filezilla
Recently I needed the FTP password for a site I manage; however, I couldn’t find the PW anywhere. Fortunately, the password was cached in FileZilla; however, there is no way to get the password from the UI. No problem, we have a solution.
Retrieve Forgotten FTP Passwords from Filezilla
The Filezilla Site Manager window is where you set up each server connection. Here your username will be displayed; however, your password will be hidden.
To retrieve your hidden passwords, open up the File menu and click Export.
Check the “Export Site Manager entries” box and click OK.
For simplicity’s sake, save the file to your Documents folder with the default FileZilla.xml name.
Now exit Filezilla and browse to your Documents folder in Windows. Open FileZilla.xml.
If you haven’t assigned a default XML reader, the file will open up in Internet Explorer. All of your user names and passwords will now be visible within the opened XML file.
- Usernames are on the User line.
- Passwords are on the Pass line.
Now you should be able to recover your Filezilla passwords from the XML file.
48 Comments
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Norman
This reassures me that with my regular PC backup (including Filezilla settings) I’m confident I can always get my passwords. A simple post that is worth lots
Many thanks
Steve Krause
@Norman – Awesome. It’s a little obscure but practical so I appreciate the comments. Austin had a nice find on this one.
Sebas
Hi Steve,
in the meanwhile there has been an update that forces encoded passwords. In the respective line of code it says: yourencodedpassword
Is there a way to decode it correctly?
All the best
Jimmy
It’s encoded in Base64 (at least for me) so go to http://base64decode.net/ and click decode, the password should be there
Anay
Great, Jimmy! Both, Austin & you Jimmy, made it possible to recover my ‘long lost’ password. :-) Austin’s solution seemed incomplete without this Base64 inclusion. :-) I was feeling stuck at this.
Jintao Lee
Thank you very much, Austin and Jimmy!
al
that helped! cheers! :)
Powell
Thank you so much for this! So simple and easy. You don’t know what mental stress I had to go through trying to figure out what my passwords were. Thank you again!
Steve Krause
You are very welcome! Welcome to groovyPost!
Christian Watson
Thanks very much – this post was exactly what I was looking for!
Janice Paulsen Guazzo
Thank you!
Roman
An eye-opener and a day-saver! Thank you thousand times!
Carlos
Fantastic. This post was a time saver. Thank you!!
ErickBest
Man…. Thanks a million Bucks… I owe you a Burger!
Qchmqs
You can’t imagine the stress I had when I taught I lost the password for the good , THANKS
Keith Davis
Thanks Austin
Worth knowing that for the day that I can’t find a password.
Pity you can’t do that from the dashboard.
Robert
Thank you so much for this, I’ve gotten so used to just using the site manger in FileZilla that I forgot the password for my site and have been trying to remember it all day so I could give access to one of my coworkers.
R Ross-Langley
Instead of sharing your own credentials (security risk, and possibly also forbidden in your staff handbook) its good practice to set up a new username and password for each co’-worker. Then the correct person appears in the access logs (in case anything goes wrong).
Anrew
This was really useful for me, thanks!
ve may bay
Thanks for this, but Latest version has lost above way
Austin
Nah, it’s still there. I just checked and you can still do this as of version 3.9.0.5
Stephanie
Oh it’s not showing now…
Now I get:
Pass encoding=”base64″ and the passwords are all unrecognizable in “in code” :(
Tobias
Stephanie,
just decode the password with a decoding tool (e.g. https://www.base64decode.org/).
Tobias
Paul
Perfect – thank you
J.Chin
Thank you. Exactly what I was looking for.
html G
Is there a way to disable the password encoding? That would be handy.
G. Paul
You, sir are a testament to the technology community. Thanks for saving me an embarrassing situation with my client (As I lost the password to their SFTP site). The internet needs more technologists like you.
Paul
You can also use Notepad++ which has a base64 decode option built into it
Dimosthenis
Thank you very very much!!!!!!
Olivera
Thank you.
Someone
The function did not work. No servers were shown at all. The information are just stored in the quick connect history. Are there any alternatives to tackle this problem?
Bill
Happened to me aswell, Im quite new to all this and a technician asked me for my FTP account but I cant seem to know what exactly my password, host etc is. Any Luck Finding a solution?
Arifur Rahman
Thanks Brother
sujatha
Thank you very much bro ! i got it :)
John
That is absolutely awesome!
Alex
how if my laptop had just been format,
and filezilla must be re-installed while i don’t have any backup data?
can i still retrieve or recall the data from the server?
please help anyone
AmliJatt
thnxxx awesomee post …
Jess
….There is no ‘pass’ information in mine……it goes straight from ‘user’ to ‘logontype.’ :C :C :C
…Any ideas? I’ve been trying to log in the *entire freakin’ day* and it just won’t accept anything I put in.
badboy4
I am switching to a new computer and I was very worried on how to retreive all my FTP password. Exporting to xml worked wonders. Life Saver! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!
Siraj
Thanks a lot.
Jubin
Thanks a lot sir.
Heather Parker
There is no ‘pass’ information in mine……it goes straight from ‘user’ to ‘logontype.’ :C :C :C
…Any ideas? I’ve been trying to log in the *entire freakin’ day* and it just won’t accept anything I put in.
Scott
Hi
I would like to retrieve all the usersnames and passwords from the filezilla server, any idea how to do this?
Thanks
Scott
ella
Hi! would love to say this worked for me but there, unfortunately, is no line ‘Pass’ underneath ‘user’
any idea would be greatly appreciated!
Jackson Snyder
I only get one of three quickconnects. Can you help me get the rest?
JNo
I wonder if there’s an alternative to Filezilla that could be used?
When I tried installing the free version of FZ today, it came with PUA.Installcore (“Avira” and 5 other programs) wiht no opt-out.
Lana
Thank you very much! That was very kind of you to post this information. Very helpful. I am very grateful.
anonymous
in 2021 this will work, but your pw will be encrypted…