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For every transaction I wanted to get, I was creating a new address, but soon I realized that there is just no way to delete all these addresses from the UI.

To make it clear, here is a picture:enter image description here

I am using Bitcoin-Qt

Is there an easy way to delete all these addresses?

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  • 2
    I know that it's not the same client you are using, but I've just noticed that the Blockchain.info wallet allows you to 'archive' addresses. Which hides addresses from the main view, putting them in an 'Archived' tab on the 'Receive Money' page. Just thought I'd pass along the message. :) – smickles Nov 21 '12 at 16:54
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I don't think it's possible to delete addresses from just the UI.

You can delete addresses completely using Pywallet. However, unless you back up the key first, this means that you will not have access to any coins sent to these addresses (either future coins or existing coins which have not moved elsewhere).

The many addresses will be more manageable if you label them. You can even simply label each as "Z" to put them at the end of the list when sorted by label.

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  • I know that it is not possible to do from UI, I am looking for other solutions. To make it clear, you basically state that if <A sent me 50 BTC to address B> and I deleted later address B, these 50 coins will be lost? The problem that I have like 300 addresses :-). I had no idea that they are not deletable. – Salvador Dali Nov 18 '12 at 18:13
  • @SalvadorDali: When I said "delete from the UI" I meant "make it so they don't appear in the UI but still able to receive coins", regardless of how you do the deletion. – Meni Rosenfeld Nov 18 '12 at 20:16
  • @SalvadorDali: If you didn't move the coins after receiving them, yes, they would be lost. An easy way to solve this is by sending all your coins to a new address, then delete the other addresses. You'll keep the coins you already received, but will lose any coins sent in the future to deleted addresses. – Meni Rosenfeld Nov 18 '12 at 20:16
  • up till now this is the best answer. Thanks. – Salvador Dali Nov 18 '12 at 20:31
  • What is the issue with having too many addresses? When you spend coins it does output selection for you, and you can simply reuse addresses for receive if you want. – Matt Dec 4 '14 at 13:09
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  1. Archive all the priv keys that you want to save. Close bitcoin-qt.
  2. Delete wallet.dat.
  3. Open bitcoin-qt.exe again.
  4. Import keys that you have dumped before.
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  • 2) Rather rename the wallet.dat just in case you need to to find your way bac – Sydwell Nov 4 '18 at 17:00
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The only way I know of Is to use something like Pywallet, as Meni mentioned.

However, I would like to point out that it is best practice to create a new address for each transaction.

If you are concerned with not being able to find a particular address, you should take care to label all your address in a useful manner at the time you create them. Once labeled, they are searchable.

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    the point is not in finding an address, but mostly in the problem that as time will go, I will have more and more of them. So I thought that it is possible to delete some. – Salvador Dali Nov 18 '12 at 20:01
  • My humble suggestion, then, is to not be concerned about how many you have. A well used wallet will have a mountain of receiving addresses, and that is a good thing for the security of your bitcoins. – smickles Nov 18 '12 at 20:19
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I found using the the command-line option datadir extremely helpful. Backing up everything first is of course advised. Once you specified a new datadir, a new wallet is created in this datadir. Then use one of the new addresses of the new wallet and transfer the funds from the old wallet to it.

Delete the old wallet in the old datadir and copy over the new wallet.dat. Works for me :)

If there is a particular address that you would like to keep, working with dumpprivkey and importing should work.

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