# Recovery Phrase Not Working

TAO.com is a non-custodial wallet, meaning that we do not have access to your private keys or recovery phrase, also known as a "seed phrase" or "mnemonic seed". We do not have any record of, or access to, your recovery phrase to assist you - the app only stores that on your phone; it is not stored by us. We have no ability to access or control user wallets.

If your recovery phrase isn't working, the only solution is to troubleshoot what may be wrong with the recovery phrase you have stored / written down. Try the following steps:

1. **Verify spelling** - Recovery phrases consist of words from the official, industry-standard [BIP39 Wordlist](https://cryptotag.io/bip39-list/). Verify the spelling of the words in your recovery phrase against that list to ensure that each word is spelled correctly.
2. **Verify word order** - Words in your recovery phrase must be entered in a specific order. Confirm you are entering your recovery phrase in exactly the same order you have stored. 
3. **Formatting** - Be sure that your recovery phrase is being formatted correctly when entering or pasting it into the app. The app can handle two formats of recovery phrases:
   1. With spaces: `wordA wordB wordC etc` 
   2. With numbers,dashes, and spaces: `1-wordA 2-wordB 3-wordC etc`
4. **Verify word count** - recovery phrases consist of either 12, 15, 18, 21, or 24 words. Be sure your recovery phrase contains a number of words that matches one of those counts.

If your recovery phrase is working but the amount of the balance in that wallet does not match what you expect, see [Help with Unfamiliar Transactions](/support/troubleshooting-and-help/help-with-unfamiliar-transactions.md).


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