Announcing the Palm Strip Export Utility

2009-12-30 19:00:00 -0500

Back in 1997 we released the first version of our mobile password manager and data vault Strip (Secure Tool for Recalling Important Passwords) for PalmOS. It quickly grew to be one of the best and most widely recognized security applications for the platform, gathering accolades from the likes of ZDNet and CNN. A few years ago we dropped support for PalmOS Strip after the decline of the Palm platform. Then, last year, we resurrected Strip by bringing a completely redesigned system to the iPhone sporting a flexible data model and new open-source encrypted database engine.

Yet, many former PalmOS Strip users have let us know that they are still trapped on their old devices, in dire need of a way to export information from their Palm databases. Some people have switched to Strip for iPhone, others just want to back up their information in case of device failure.

Today we are pleased to release a free utility that can export your legacy PalmOS Strip databases out to a simple Comma Separated Value file. Once your databases are exported you can print them, open them in Excel or import them into a separate program. Most importantly, these export files will be directly importable to the iPhone when we release our first Strip desktop sync tool in the coming months.

How To Export

Note: This exporter only works with Palm Strip 1.0 or 2.0 Databases. If you are not running one of these versions you should upgrade first. This utility is not intended for use with the iPhone version of Strip (we will be releasing a iPhone sync package soon that will provide similar functionality).

Start off by downloading the exporter program:

• Download Palm Strip Export for Windows
• Download Palm Strip Export for Mac OS X

Save the program to your computer and then run it:

1. Enter the password for your Palm-Strip database. This is the same password you would enter into the program normally.
2. Click the “Choose Directory” button, and navigate to the location of your Strip Databases. These will usually be in your Palm desktop install folder, usually something like C:\Program Files\palm\<username>\backups.
3. Click the “Save As” button to choose the location to export the file.
4. Click the “Export To File” button.

The system will then export your entire database out to a CSV file at the selected location. Your data will be left intact, with the exception that line breaks will be removed from Note fields to allow the export. Open your file in a spreadsheet like Excel or in a text editor like Notepad to verify the results.

Credits & Code

This new exporter tool is based on the pioneering work by David Dribin’s perl-strip, an early exporter for Strip databases. We’ve taken his great Palm::Zetetic::Strip module and forked it on GitHub. Our updates include the use of newer digest libraries and updates to support the full Strip 2.0 database format (including service types). We’ve also released the source to the palm-strip-export application on GitHub.