Save and Use Your Team Recovery Kit

The Team recovery kit is a spare key to your team’s documents: an encrypted file plus a code. Nobody else has a copy, not even Elephas. If every approved computer is lost and the kit is gone too, your team’s documents cannot be opened again.

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What the kit is

The file alone is useless without the code, and the code alone is useless without the file. That is why Elephas asks you to keep them in two separate safe places.

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Before you start

• You are the Team Owner, or you hold Recovery Authority on this computer.
• The Team workspace is open, and you are in Team Settings › Recovery.

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Steps

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Save the kit during setup

You save the kit once, as part of setting up the Team. Setup cannot finish without it: Complete Setup stays locked until the file is saved and you confirm you wrote down the code.

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Make a new kit if you lost the file or the code

If you lost your kit but still have a computer that holds the Team’s recovery key, make a new one. If this computer holds no recovery key, Elephas says so: “This device holds no recovery key for this Team, so it cannot export a package. Use a device that is a Recovery Authority, or import a package here first.”

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Check a kit still works

In Team Settings › Recovery, follow the four steps under Import or export a recovery package: Choose the encrypted package, Enter the recovery code, Acknowledge what recovery means, then Verify or import it. Choose Verify package to check the file and code match without installing anything. Elephas confirms: “Recovery package verified. Nothing was installed.”

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How it works

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A new kit does not cancel the old one

Exporting makes a new file and a new code for the same recovery key. In the app’s words: “It does not cancel earlier packages: any older package with its code still works.” Use export when a kit was lost. If you think a kit was stolen or copied, exporting a new one does not help. That needs a key rotation, which is a separate, Team-wide operation. Contact support.

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What happens without the kit

Elephas cannot rebuild a lost kit. It cannot email you a new code, and support cannot relink your account to the keys. This is the price of encryption that Elephas itself cannot open.

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Recovery Authority

A Recovery Authority is someone whose approved computers hold the Team’s recovery key. The Owner’s first computer is one. Once your team has more than one administrator, give Recovery Authority to a second trusted person, so the Team does not depend on one computer. In Team Settings › Recovery, under Recovery Authority operations, enter that person’s Team Principal ID, choose Grant Recovery Authority, then Distribute approved device wraps so their approved computers receive the key.

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Troubleshooting

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