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I remember that on Electrum, it used to have a Preview button inside the Send tab. By clicking the Preview button I could export the unsigned transaction, and then sign it.

I cannot find this button anymore, I can only see Pay button, and when I clicked it I got a "Not Enough Funds" error. This is because I am doing this in my offline desktop computer (offline wallet).

Is it still possible to create a signed transaction offline using electrum?

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  • There is an option on bottom-left to export: i.sstatic.net/GPlsx.png Yes it is possible to create a signed transaction offline using electrum. I will answer the question below in a better way and check the error that you got when I am near my desktop.
    – user103136
    Commented Mar 10, 2021 at 17:25
  • on the new version that export button is hidden somewhere. It seems that I need to click Pay and Advanced but I got an error when opening the Advanced window... I'm on Debian using the AppImage electrum 4.0.9
    – bbnn
    Commented Mar 10, 2021 at 18:18

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Enter output address, amount and click on pay:

electrum-pay

Decide the fee rate and click on finalize:

electrum-finalize

You can export the transaction hex from bottom-left before or after signing the transaction:

electrum-export

Make sure "Advanced Preview" is active in the preferences:

Electrum-Preferences

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  • Thank you very much for your answer as always. I will try to activate the Advanced preview today. Somehow I got an error when I click Advanced inside the pay window. Maybe there is a bug with the Electrum AppImage for linux. I will try again today.
    – bbnn
    Commented Mar 11, 2021 at 3:12
  • I just tried this on Mac with wallet that has 0 balance. It shows error Not Enough Funds when I click pay..
    – bbnn
    Commented Mar 11, 2021 at 3:17
  • If the wallet has zero balance, what are you trying to spend in the transaction?
    – user103136
    Commented Mar 11, 2021 at 3:34
  • I mean the wallet has zero balance only on electrum, because it is offline the balance does not sync. The wallet actually has some balance on the blockchain.
    – bbnn
    Commented Mar 11, 2021 at 4:25
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    Your original question was if it is possible to create and sign transaction offline in Electrum. Yes it's possible. If the wallet doesn't have enough information to create transaction, you will get error. You will need to use one or more commands from here: github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/master/electrum/commands.py and maybe addtransaction will be helpful if input belongs to wallet
    – user103136
    Commented Mar 11, 2021 at 4:39
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Official documentation says all: https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/coldstorage.html

You can not prepare offline transaction on offline computer. You need to prepare it on online computer, sign on offline computer and then "Broadcast" on online computer.

Online computer wallet does not have to have private keys, and in this case it is the best to have "watch-only" wallet on online computer.

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    This is not true
    – user103136
    Commented Mar 10, 2021 at 17:21
  • I hope that is not true, because I want this to be a completely offline wallet without any watch-only wallet on online computer. I'm also afraid to expose the master public key. (but is there any way to derive the master public key from the public address? if that is the case then there is no reason to hide the master public key)
    – bbnn
    Commented Mar 11, 2021 at 4:26
  • Master Public Key can be used only to generate public addresses of your wallet (which you created offline). Even if someone steal your master public key, one can only see your balance and transactions, but can not spend it, because there is no way to find private keys from it.
    – buggy08
    Commented Mar 12, 2021 at 14:20

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