From all the discussion it still seems like aside from having the backup of the certificate file that was saved with the private key by password "abc123"

that when the TDE database is restored to a different server the certificate file is required and knowledge of what the password was.

So if the DBA that created the TDE database and saved the certificate is no longer at the company or has a bad memory ... does that mean the password is lost and the TDE db cannot be restored? if the "original" password is not known .. how do you get around that? or is it not needed?