Most of the time, you will acquire new certificates by verifying signatures in emails, since certificates are embedded in the signatures made using them most of the time. However, if you need to send a mail to someone you have not yet had contact with, you need to fetch the certificate from an LDAP directory (although GpgSM can do this automatically), or from a file. You also need to import your own certificate after receiving the CA answer to your certification request.
To search for a certificate in an LDAP directory, switch the dropdown menu of the search bar from in Local Certificates to in External Certificates, enter some text (e.g. the name of the person you want the certificate for) into the line edit, and click on the Find icon. The results will be displayed in the key list below the search bar, where you can select certificates to either look at them with -> or download them with -> into the local keybox. Note that you can also download the certificate from the details dialog, using the Import to Local button.
You can configure the list of LDAP servers to search in the Directory Services page of Kleopatra's configure dialog.
If you received the certificate as a file, try ->. GpgSM needs to understand the format of the certificate file; please refer to GpgSM's manual for a list of supported file formats.
If you did not create your
keypair with GpgSM, you also need to manually import the
public key (as well as the secret key) from the PKCS#12 file you got from
the CA. You can do this on the command line with kleopatra
or from
within Kleopatra with ->,
just as you would to for “normal” certificates.--import-certificate
filename
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