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Say you created your own .PFX file for example with MakeCert.exe and imported it to the certificate store. Let’s change the friendly name and export it to a new .PFX file.
Why do this? Well if you need to share you certificates they need to look pretty! A later blog post will cover the usage of MakeCert.exe.
Change the friendly name from the MMC snapin
The friendly name for a certificate is actually just an extended property. Sometimes the friendly name is missing, ie if you created your own .PFX file using Makecert.exe the friendly name won’t tag along.
- Open the MMC snapin “Certificates – Current User Account”
- Find your imported Certificate and double-click it.
- Go to the “Details” tab and click “Edit Properties”
- Change the friendly name. Done!
Export to a *new* PFX
- · Right-clicking the certificate, “all tasks” and “export”
- · Tick the “Yes, export the private key”
- · Tick the “Include all cert” and “Export all extended properties” but not the “Delete private key”
- · Enter a password (I recommend to use the same as your original PFX cert) and finish the wizard.
Optional: To verify that all works, you can delete this cert from the store that you just exported, and re-import it and see the friendly name included!!
Export to a *new* .CER file
Optional: Can be good to have
- Right-clicking the certificate, “all tasks” and “export”
- Tick the “No, do not export the private key”
- Choose Base64 encoded X.509 cert (base64 is basically readable text instead of using binary code)
Finishing up
I deleted the original .CER and .PVK files (Certificate and it’s private key) since i now have a new .CER file.
I also deleted the original .PFX file (this PFX file contained the old .CER and .PVK data) as not to mix these all files together.
Resources
See this link for extensive guides to working with MakeCert.exe and the other Pvk tool:
http://www.digitallycreated.net/Blog/38/using-makecert-to-create-certificates-for-development
Makecert.exe
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bfsktky3(v=vs.80).aspx
Pvk2Pfx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff550672.aspx
Monitoring Azure apps
http://azurecheck.cloudapp.net
Web/Cloud Performance monitoring and test
http://www.apicasystem.com
.NET & Software Development 
Perfect mate. Exactly what I needed and was suprisingly easy
Glad it helped. 🙂
I could not found the guide about doing the same thing with makecert. Is it possible to do to begin with? If you managed to change/define the friendly name for a certificate without importing it to a store (or use a GUI) I would be very interested to see how.
Thank you! Works perfectly! 🙂
Nice tweak! Made my day. Thanks.