How to Import Certificates in PowerShell

1. Importance of Certificates in PowerShell
2. Import Certificates Using Import-Certificate Keyword
3. Useful Parameters for Import-Certificate Keyword

This article shows how to import certificates with the help of the PowerShell script. Also, we will see necessary examples and explanations to make the topic easier.

Importance of Certificates in PowerShell

Have you thought about the importance of Digital Certificates? Why are we importing them? It is because they are mainly used to verify identity. It is a collection of data that is used to identify an entity.

Our system already provides many certificates by default. But, sometimes we must import them from outside stores as our required certificate may not be available in our system.

Import Certificates Using Import-Certificate Keyword

We will use the following single-line command to import a Certificate using PowerShell.

Import-Certificate -FilePath "C:\Users\Directory\Desktop\BackupCert.Cer" -CertStoreLocation cert:\CurrentUser\Root

The keyword Import-Certificate is a built-in keyword on PowerShell. It is mainly used to import certificates to the user’s preferred directory.

In the above example, we are importing a certificate named BackupCert.Cer from C:\Users\Directory\Desktop\BackupCert.Cer.

After successfully running the above command, we will get our certificate imported.

Useful Parameters for Import-Certificate Keyword

Following are some of the essential parameters regarding the Import-Certificate keyword:

• -CertStoreLocation - This parameter specifies the path of the certificate store where the user needs to import the certificates. It will execute on its default value if we don’t provide any value for this parameter.
• -Confirm - It is used to confirm the execution of the cmdlet.
• -FilePath - This parameter specifies the file that needs to be imported. There are some acceptable file formats for this parameter which are .sst, .p7b, and .cert files
• -WhatIf - This parameter will show the result if the cmdlet runs.

We can use these valuable parameters as per our requirements. Please note that the example codes shared here are only executable on the Windows PowerShell environment.