How to Import, Export and Manage Passwords in Microsoft Edge?

Managing login passwords is one of the most difficult things in this digital world. Website and apps have their own login credentials, forgetting passwords and resetting every time will be an annoying task. Similarly, you also need to export and import all your passwords when changing devices. Browsers like Microsoft Edge offers easy solution to store your passwords. In this article, we will explain how to import, export, and manage passwords in Microsoft Edge using default password manager.

Microsoft Edge Password Manager

The latest Chromium based Edge has similar password management capabilities like Google Chrome browser. It is really powerful that you do not any third-party extensions for password management anymore. However, Chrome has a limitation that you cannot import password though you can export to a CSV file. Fortunately, you can do both import and export passwords in Edge along with the following password management options.

• Edge will ask you to store passwords when logging into websites.
• It will automatically allow you to login to websites using the stored username and password.
• You can synchronize all passwords across your devices like Windows PC, MacBook, iPhone, and Android phone using your Microsoft account. However, You do not need to login to Microsoft account for storing passwords only in one device.
• Edge can also find the leaked passwords in data breach and suggest you strong passwords. You can update the passwords directly on the Edge or from the login form of the website.
• You can delete password for a specific site or choose not to store as per your need. For example, you can choose not to save the password for banking and other confidential sites.

Accessing Edge Password Manager

There are two ways to access password manager in Microsoft Edge.

• Click on the three dots icon showing on the top right corner that says, “Settings and more” and select “Settings” from the menu list.

• When you are in Edge settings page, go to “Profiles” section and select “Passwords” option.

• Now, you will see the password manager where you can manage all passwords in one place.

Alternatively, you can simply go to edge://settings/passwords URL to access password manager section in Edge.

Edge Password Manager Options

Let us explain all options in detail along with import and export passwords in a list.

Disable Password Manager

When you are in Edge password manager, make sure to enable “Offer to save passwords” option. Whenever you login to a website, Edge will ask you to save the password using this setting. You can turn this setting off to completely disable password manager in Edge.

Sign in Options

When the password manager is enabled (which is the default option), Edge will ask to save the password whenever you login to a website. Click “Save” to store the password and “Never” to not store the password.

Under settings section, you can view all websites along with stored password and those sites you never want to store the passwords.

Edge will remember the sites opted for never saving passwords and will not ask you when you login next time. If you change your mind, go to the settings and click on X icon showing next to the site under “Never saved” section. Next time when you login, Edge will suggest saving the password and you can store the password safely. Under “Sign in:” section, you can choose to the login behavior for the sites you have opted to store passwords in Edge.

Automatically login will enable to get the username and password when viewing the login form of the site. You can click on the username field to the login username retrieved from Edge along with the suggestion to use strong password if your password is weak.

Click on the password field to retrieve the stored password or get a strong password suggestion from Edge.

Managing Saved Passwords in Edge

As you can see the “Saved passwords” section will show the “Health” for each password. You can hover over and get the alert whether it is weak, used multiple times and leaked in a data breach.

• Click on the eye icon against a website to see the stored password for that site. You need to provide Windows administrator password to view the password.
• Similarly, click on the three dots icon showing at the end of each site to get additional options. You can copy/edit/change/delete password and hide the health status.

Import and Export Passwords in Edge

In order to import and export passwords, click on the three dots showing at the end of “Saved passwords” option.

You will see two options – Import passwords and Export passwords.

Select, “Export passwords” to download all stored passwords and then click on “Export passwords” button in the pop-up that appears.

Edge will prompt you to enter the Windows administrator password, enter your admin password and click “OK” button.

In next step, you can select the location on your computer to save the password file in “Microsoft Excel Comma Separated Value” format (CSV format).

Now, locate the saved file and open to view all your passwords. The file will have four columns for name, URL, username, and password as shown below.

You can add additional lines and import back in Edge. Similarly, you can download the file from one computer and import in another computer if you are not synchronizing passwords with Microsoft account. You can also use this feature for exporting passwords from Google Chrome and then importing to Edge in different computer by adjusting the format.

When you are in Edge password manager section, click on “Import passwords” against “Saved passwords” option. You will see the “Import browsing data” pop-up like below.

The warning symbol indicates that importing passwords for already existing sites will be overwritten. By default, you will see “Password CSV file” under “Import from” and click on the dropdown to see additional options. As you can see, you can import passwords from Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, or HTML file from favorites/bookmarks.

Select “Password CSV file” and then click on “Choose file” button. Select your file to import the passwords and you will see a success message saying, “All Done – We’ve brought your data over”.

Now, you can see all the imported passwords under “Save passwords” section. Remember, importing passwords will not delete any existing entries. It will add new site’s passwords to the list and overwrite the entries for the same URL.

Password Security Options

Edge password manager offers strong security options to protect your online safety.

• Disable “Show the “Reveal password” button in password fields” option to prevent viewing typed password in the login form.
• Enable “Suggest strong passwords” option for Edge to suggest strong password when your saved password is weak.
• If you want to get an alert for password leak, enable “Show alert when passwords are found in an online leak” option.

Click on the “View results” option that appears after enabling the password leak alert. It will take you to the password monitor page, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on “Scan now” button.

If there are leaked passwords, you can see in the result to change or ignore them.

Note: Remember, though using password manager in Edge is safe, anyone with your computer’s administrator password can be able to view and download all your passwords.