How do I restore / recreate my Ledger Monero wallet?

Question

I have lost my Ledger device and/or cannot access the system with my Ledger Monero wallet files. How do I restore / recreate my Ledger Monero wallet?

Answer 1

I've noticed some confusion lately on how to restore one's Ledger Monero wallet. I have therefore written this guide.

In case you have also lost (access to) your Ledger device, you first have to restore the 24 word Ledger mnemonic seed in another Ledger device.

Restoring / recreating a Ledger Monero wallet is fortunately fairly trivial thereafter.

GUI:

• Basically you ought to follow this guide with one minor tweak to recreate / restore the Ledger Monero wallet. That is, the Restore a wallet from device option has to be selected (in step 8). This allows you to set a Restore height that is in advance of the first transaction to your Ledger Monero wallet. A detailed explanation about the Restore height parameter can be found here. For convenience, I've added a table with restore heights to the appendix.

Note: Use this work around if you cannot access the Restore height box:

There is a fix for the time being: You can access the restore height window by selecting the wallet location and pressing tab once.

CLI:

• Basically you ought to follow this guide with one minor tweak to recreate / restore the Ledger Monero wallet. That is, you have to append the --restore-height flag (with a proper block height as value) to the command that is used / executed to recreate / restore the Ledger Monero wallet. A proper restore height is set by choosing a value (block height) that is in advance of the first transaction to your wallet. A detailed explanation about the Restore height parameter can be found here. For convenience, I've added a table with restore heights to the appendix.

Appendix:

My wallet was created in | Restore Height I should use
November  2020           | 2175000
October   2020           | 2155000
September 2020           | 2135000
August    2020           | 2115000
July      2020           | 2095000
June      2020           | 2075000
May       2020           | 2055000
April     2020           | 2035000
March     2020           | 2015000
February  2020           | 1995000
January   2020           | 1975000
December  2019           | 1955000
November  2019           | 1935000
October   2019           | 1915000
September 2019           | 1895000
August    2019           | 1875000
July      2019           | 1855000
June      2019           | 1835000
May       2019           | 1815000
April     2019           | 1795000
March     2019           | 1775000
February  2019           | 1755000
January   2019           | 1735000
December  2018           | 1715000
November  2018           | 1690000
October   2018           | 1665000
September 2018           | 1640000
August    2018           | 1615000
July      2018           | 1590000
June      2018           | 1565000
May       2018           | 1540000
April     2018           | 1515000