Quote from: bitcoinbitcoin on August 05, 2014, 12:58:49 AM

"When spending bitcoins from an imported private key in electrum the change is sent back to one of the input addresses which may well be the imported private key's address."

I thought electrum uses a fresh deterministic address for all change? You're saying if u spend half of an imported privkey, then the change MAY go back into the same privkey? i thought that was a privacy no-no that only mobile wallets make the mistake of doing.

Electrum does it for transactions involving imported private keys only. For all other transactions a fresh change address is used.

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So then what is the best way to "sweep" a private key into electrum?
You have to spend the whole amount or nothing?? (to prevent the possible reuse of addresses)
(i was thinking of testing with a small amount first)

thanks Abdussamad!

Yes, send the whole amount to a receiving address in your main account. Right click on the imported private key and use the send from option. Then in the amount field on the send tab enter exclamation point to have it automatically fill in the full amount you can send using that private key.