Remove certificates
APPLIES TO: 
2013 2016 2019 
Subscription Edition SharePoint in Microsoft 365
SharePoint supports removing certificates via Remove-SPCertificate PowerShell cmdlet.
- By default, SharePoint will not allow you to remove a certificate if it is currently assigned to a SharePoint object. You must override the default behavior if you want to force the removal of a certificate. If you override the default behavior, existing assignments of the certificate are cleared.
- The certificate and any private key associated with that certificate is removed from the Windows certificate store on every server in the SharePoint farm.
- The certificate and any private key associated with it is removed from the SharePoint configuration database.
- Any previous exports from the certificate through the SharePoint administration interface will not be removed. Those exported files will still exist.
Use the Remove-SPCertificate cmdlet to remove a certificate from SharePoint.
For example:
Remove-SPCertificate [-Identity] <SPServerCertificatePipeBind> [-Force] [-WhatIf] [-Confirm] [<CommonParameters>]
The cmdlet parameters are:
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| Identity | The certificate to remove from SharePoint. |
| Force | Specifies that the certificate should be removed from SharePoint, even if the certificate is currently assigned to SharePoint objects. If this parameter is specified, any existing assignments of the certificate are also cleared. If this parameter isn't specified and the certificate is assigned to a SharePoint object, the operation will fail. |
For example:
Remove-SPCertificate -Identity "Contoso SharePoint (2020)"