Knowledge Base

How to Import a Certificate to Windows Certificate Manager

Updated on June 19, 2026

Overview

By the end of this guide, you will have imported a Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) certificate into the Windows Certificate Manager and confirmed it appears in your personal certificate store. The procedure uses the built-in Certificate Import Wizard. You will open Certificate Manager, navigate to the Personal store, run the Certificate Import Wizard, choose where to store the certificate, and verify the import.

Prerequisites

Perform the import on the same Windows computer where the Certificate Signing Request (CSR) was generated.

Steps

Open Certificate Manager.

Press Win + R, type certmgr.msc, and press Enter. This opens the certificate store for the current user.

Figure 1: Windows Certificate Manager open for the current user.

Navigate to the Personal Certificate Store.

In the left pane, expand Certificates – Current User, then expand the personal folder. Right-click Certificates under Personal and select All Tasks → Import.

Figure 2: Personal → Certificates with All Tasks → Import selected.

Start the Certificate Import Wizard.

Click Next on the wizard welcome screen. Browse to your downloaded certificate file, select it, and click Next.

Figure 3: Certificate Import Wizard with the certificate file selected.

Choose the certificate store.

Select Automatically select the certificate store based on the type of certificate, then click Next and Finish. The certificate is now imported into Windows Certificate Manager.

Figure 4: Automatically select the certificate store based on certificate type