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So I've seen many many posts on how to do the conversion with private key; but does anyone one know how I can do this with just only public key? As I'm trying to convert someone else's public key.

Or is this something not possible and I need to ask them to generate one themselves?

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    PEM format can wrap up a few different things. Could you clarify. Are you trying to create a certificate (x509) or are you just trying to convert the public key format? – Philip Couling Feb 11 '19 at 10:43
  • are you trying to get a private key from a public key ? assymetric key were meant to make this impossible. Could you give more details ? – Archemar Feb 11 '19 at 10:45
  • @PhilipCouling Sorry, I should've added what I was trying to do. It is for encrypting files to share. – Praveen Premaratne Feb 11 '19 at 10:59
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If you are just looking to convert a public key, not create a certificate then you only need the public key.

ssh-keygen -f id_rsa.pub -e -m pem > id_rsa.pub.pem

Will read a public key file id_rsa.pub (containing just your friend's public key) and convert it to pem format.

The private key would be needed for something like a self signed certificate (in x509 format) because it's the private key that generates the signature.

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