I honestly did try searching for this and couldn’t find an answer so I’m asking for help and advice.
My free certificate expired so I applied for a new one all of which worked fine. However, when the email came telling me to click the link to retrieve the certificate, what then happens is that I’m told the I don’t have the private key. I didn’t get an email with a private key and so have no idea what I now need to do?
If I revoke the certificate and then re-apply would that work?
When you apply for a new certificate, in the first step a new private key is created and stored into the browser’s certificate store.
In the second step, this private key is needed to successfully collect the certificate.
So make sure, you’re using the same browser for collecting as you did for applying.
If this doesn’t work with your browser, my suggestion would be to revoke your requested certificate again and this time using Internet Explorer for both requesting and collecting your certificate.