Dreamweaver Password Recovery

Lost your FTP password? Dreamweaver stores your password as an encrypted string in the site definition. The string is a longish group of seemingly random characters. In fact, it is a hexadecimal number. There are two places you can obtain the encrypted version of your password to use in this function:

  1. Export your site definition to an .ste file, then look at the .ste file in a text editor for the string:
    pw="encrypted password here"
  2. If using a Windows machine, run RegEdit and locate the registry key for the site definitions appropriate for your Dreamweaver version. Be careful not to change, add or delete anything in the registry while looking!
    • Dreamweaver 4
      HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Macromedia\Dreamweaver 4\Sites
    • Dreamweaver MX
      HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Macromedia\Dreamweaver 6\Sites
    • Dreamweaver MX 2004
      HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Macromedia\Common\2004\Sites
    • Dreamweaver 8 and newer
      A different algorithm is used in the registry for DW8 and newer. Use the exported site definition to obtain the encrypted password.

    The individual sites are listed below that key. Selecting a site will display the site definition information on the right. Your encrypted password is in the key "User PW". If you double-click the key name, a dialog box will open, where you can select the text in the encrypted key, right click and copy it to the Windows clipboard. Then click the Cancel button to make sure you don't modify it. You can then paste it below.

Once you have the encrypted password, enter it below.

Encrypted password: