No provisioning profiles with a valid signing identity (i.e. certificate and private key pair) were found

Question

Yes, I am aware of the numerous duplicates of this question, but I tried everything suggested by others. At this point I don't have duplicates, I revoked and regenerated the certificates and keys from the scratch, I have my certificates paired with the corresponding keys.

The problem that I am facing is as follows: if I try to have the release with a distribution profile in my build settings I keep getting the error specified in my header, having a development profile though, works and doesn't provoke any problems. In case, I continue with a development profile and create the archive, when trying to distribute it, I can not specify my distribution profile again as I keep getting The private key for "" is not installed on this mac.

For generating certificates and keys,I used xCodes Preferences -> Account. For my development certificate xCode downloaded the certificate on it's own, while the distribution one I had to download manually. It did as well download all the profiles for me as I can visualise them in my iPhone configuration utility.

The question is: Am I missing something for the distribution profile? The error message says: No codesigning identities (i.e. certificate and private key pairs) that match the provisioning profile specified in your build settings "" were found. does this mean that I have to link my certificate with the profile somehow?

Answer 1

You should go to KeyChain Access and check if your distribution certificate contains a private key. If it doesn't, you need to regenerate your distribution certificate, the private key can't be retrieve from developer site, which means you have lost the key forever.

The distribution certificate should look like this: