Defining the friendly name certificate property

First published on TECHNET on Dec 12, 2008

The friendly name of a certificate can be helpful if multiple certificates with a similar subject exist in a certificate store.

One way to set the friendly name is through the certificate MMC SnapIn. Alternatively certutil.exe can be used in the following way:

1. Open Notepad and past the following text into the editor

   [Version]
   Signature = "$Windows NT$"
   [Properties]
   11 = "{text}My Friendly Name"

2. Save the file as friendlyname.inf
3. Determine the serialnumber of the certificate where the friendly name should be changed.
4. If the certificate exists in the user’s certificate store, run the following command at a command-line

certutil –repairstore –user my {SerialNumber} FriendlyName.inf