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I needed to create a custom web part using Visual Studio 2003 for a SharePoint 2003 client intranet, something I have never done before. As fellow SharePoint developers will know, you need to strongly name your project assembly whenever you need deploy a custom made web part.

Visual Studio 2005 and onwards allows you to easily create a strongly named key through the graphical user interface. In Visual Studio 2003, you will need to use the Visual Studio 2003 Command Prompt. You can find the Visual Studio 2003 Command Prompt by going to: Start > Program Files > Visual Studio 2003 > Visual Studio.NET Tools > Visual Studio .NET 2003 Command Prompt.

Once the command prompt window has opened all you need to do is enter the following to create a SNK:

Setting environment for using Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 tools.
(If you have another version of Visual Studio or Visual C++ installed and wish
to use its tools from the command line, run vcvars32.bat for that version.)
 
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop>sn -k MyKey.snk
 
Microsoft (R) .NET Framework Strong Name Utility  Version 1.1.4322.573
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 1998-2002. All rights reserved. 
 
Key pair written to MyKey.snk
 
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop>

As you can see from my command prompt example above, I am creating a new SNK file called MyKey.snk. This SNK file will be generated on my Desktop.