Steve,

Thanks for the reply. Below is what I did on the Prod db:

1. Created Master Key encryption by password.

2. Create Certificates

3. Create Symmetric keys encryption by certificates.

Client restored the test db with the Prod data last week. For some reason, developer was getting error 'No master key found' when tried to encrypt the data. So, first tried to drop master key, but was unable to drop unless we drop the symmetric keys and the certificates. Then followed the same 3 steps above and created the master key, certificates, symmetric keys on the test db with the same password that was used in the prod db. As you said, I'll try to just restore the master key and see if it will work.

But, is there a reason why it wont work if we re-create the certificates and symmetric keys as well?? Because, when the database crashes and we restore the database, dont we have to re-create all of them?

Thanks a lot for your help. I really appreciate it.