Digital Certificate Install on other systems

[ErikJan]

Using a digital certificate (self sign) for code. When others 'install my certificate' they can set up their Excel to 'trust' me and the code in my tools will run without the 'macro-prompt". This always worked fine but I seem to have forgotten how someone else can install my certificate. The first parts are logical until I get here:

Capture5.png

I believe here I should choose manually (as the auto option doesn't work) but I'm stuck where to have the certificate installed "which store" (also 'personal' does not do the trick). I searched around but couldn't find this quickly. Anyone here who can help me out?

[HansV]

Did you create the certificate using SelfCert.exe? If so, it will only be valid on your computer.

[ErikJan]

Yeas, I did that (and that works of course). I want other computers to work with that... worked fine always...

[HansV]

Strange, I have never been able to trust a certificate created with SelfCert on another PC...

[ErikJan]

That worked here for years (for sure under 2003, I'm now beginning to wonder if it ever did under 2007). Trick was to:
1. "Show Signature Details"
2. "View Certificate"
3. "Install Certificate"
4. Place it in the right store (this is where I'm temporarily lost)

UPDATE - I found documented evidence that I did do this and the store in option 4 was the 'automatic'... I used this to with another party to have PC's setup to allow macros to run without prompt. This was done for years. But it was on XP and Office 2003... Either because this is Win7 and/or because of Office 2007 I can't get this back anymore...

Then next time Excel sees the certificate and asks if user should be trusted... select Yes, then no more prompts (ever) :-)

[HansV]

Hopefully someone else will be able to help you with this.

[StuartR]

Sorry, I have only ever used real certificates for this. I don't really know the restrictions on self-cert.

If the automatic setting doesn't work then I don't think specifying a specific certificate store will work either.

[Jan Karel Pieterse]

Can you "export" the certificate and then do some "run as administrator" trick to import it using IE?

[ErikJan]

Sorry it took a while before I had the time to re-test this and indeed re-confirm that this did work before.

I've attached a file with annotated screen-captures indicating how (in Windows XP using Office 2003) I load an Excel-file with a Self-sign VBA certificate (not(!) created on this system).
The system indicated it sees code I then show the 8 steps to install the certificate. Upon re-load the sheet, now there's the option to "Always trust macros from this publisher" which all allow the sheet to open in future cases without prompts and with macros enabled (if the right setting is enabled in Excel of course).

My problem is that I'd like this to happen in Win7 / Office 2007/2010 and I can't (yet). Not sure if this is Windows or Office (yet)...

UPDATE - The mentioned attachement was added to the post

[Jan Karel Pieterse]

Can you perhaps attach a tiny workbook with a signed macro so we can test it for ourselves?

[ErikJan]

I can do that; will try to create something later this week.

Hope the PDF I attached is already clarifying (I tried to make it as clear as I could)

[Jan Karel Pieterse]

I had no problem accessing the dialog, see attached.

[ErikJan]

OK, I see that but now if you re-open the document, is there a difference and can you now 'always trust' so that the next time after that the macro prompt is no longer there...???

[Jan Karel Pieterse]

I did not try that, as I didn't want to add that test cert to my certificate store.

[ErikJan]

OK, but if you know where it is you can manually delete it after your tests, right? I show in my PDF where I found them back in the certificate store on my PC

[Jan Karel Pieterse]

YOu can, but you have to make sure you install the cert in the trusted root store, see attached.

[Jan Karel Pieterse]

Perhaps the trusted publishers store also works, up to you to try!

[ErikJan]

I tried most of the stores I think and nothing seemed to work, I'll give it a more 'structured' try and will let you know.

[Jan Karel Pieterse]

Perhaps you need to run Excel as admin?

[ErikJan]

I don't know what I did wrong initially and/or did different this time but now things do appear to work at least on my system. I'll do some more tests and will then create a similar PDF document as before to describe the steps to do this.

(by the way... I did not even need to open Excel as admin)

Attachment added by HansV at Erik Jan's request:

SelfSign in Win7 Off2007 and 2010.pdf