How to enable

Gpg4win help-en
1

Dear all,

I’m new to GPG4Win, so this may be a stupid/silly question. I’m using GPG4win on 64-bit Win7 with 32-bit Outlook 2010. Everything’s working fine, except for the slight problem that when I send an encrypted message, I can’t decrypt or read the copy which gets saved to my sent items folder.

I’ve seen references in the manual and in these forums (e.g. https://wald.intevation.org/forum/message.php?msg_id=566&group_id=11) to the fact that GpgOL can be set to encrypt sent items with your own key so you can then decrypt them yourself. However, I cannot seem to find how/where to turn this on anywhere!! If you can help me I will be hugely grateful as this is driving me nuts.

Many thanks.

2

Sorry - was halfway through typing the title on my original post and accidentally leant on the submit button. Title should have read ‘How to enable decryptable sent items in GpgOL in Outlook 2010’.

Since I can’t edit my original post hopefully this will help a bit!

3

You cannot decrypt anything that you encrypt with someone else’s public key. You can encrypt it with your own public in addition to their public key if you want to be able to decrypt it later, but if you have the original unencrypted copy that should not be neccessary.

4

Hi Greg,

Many thanks for the quick follow up. I understand that I can’t decrypt anything encrypted with someone else’s public key but I was struggling to get GpgOL to do the ‘encrypt this with my key too’ bit.

I was assuming that it was an option or setting somewhere in GpgOL, but I couldn’t find any options or settings anywhere. However, I think I have quite accidentally stumbled on the reason, and it appears to be related to whether I use GPA or Kleopatra.

I started out using GPA, just because the How-to article (from arstechnica) I was following used it. With GPA running it asks me which key I want to use for the recipient and encrypts and sends it fine, but the copy that goes in my sent items is just a straight copy of the encrypted message that only the recipient can decrypt, and there doesn’t appear to be any way round it. (I presume if I CC’d myself I could encrypt my copy with my key, but the chances of actually remembering to do that each time are slim :} )

More by accident than anything else I tried using Kleopatra instead, and it works exactly as the Compendium and the forum thread suggested it should. It asks which key I want to use for the recipient and which key I want to use for me, and I can then decrypt the copy in sent items with my key. Unless you know of any killer reason to use GPA, I think I’ll stick to Kleo from now on.

Thanks again for the help.

TL;DR Kleo does the job, GPA seems to be missing a bit of functionality.

5

Hi Chris,

thanks for writing this up. Imho GPA should include the Sender in the list of recipients it encrypts to.

Just for the record. You could probably also achieved your goal by adding the option:

encrypt-to
in your gpg.conf

https://www.gnupg.org/gph/en/manual/r1261.html

That way it would have been handled by gnupg directly regardless of the UI.

6

Hi Andre,

Many thanks for that - guess I’ve got a bit more reading to go yet!