Unable to encrypt emails

Gpg4win help-en
1

We have been successfully receiving and decrypting emails using a key pair generated by GnuPg. However, I now want to try sending encrypted emails. Everytime I attempt to do this (either via the GnuPG options in Outlook, or using the encrypt clipboard in WPT), an error is thrown saying that the public key is unusable (which given that others are using that key to encrypt files we successfully decrypting does not actually seem to be the case). This happens with either of the two keys I am trying to use. Both keys show the following settings:
The key has both a private and a public part
The key can be used for certification, signing and encryption
Expires at: never expires
Owner Trust: Ultimate
Key Validity: Fully Valid Key
Type: DSA 1024 bits

Is anyone else finding this to be an issue? Does anyone have any suggestions?

Using gui version GP4win 1.1.3 (cuz .4 just throws and error and doesn’t run) on an XP platform with Outlook 2003.

Thanks,

Andi

2

Im not sure but maybe this will help you?
http://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-users/2001-October/010589.html

3

Thanks Dennis,

Actually, I had long ago given up trying to do this as I was just trying to send information “in-house” and was told that this met Security Standards. If I have the need to try again, I will try your advice…

Best,
Andi

4

In order to get more details about the key, you could try the operation on the command line with “gpg2.exe”. E.g. like this:

gpg2.exe -vvv --debug-all -e -r “KEYID” file.txt

Then you could ask on the gnupg-users mailinglist for more advice. GnuPG rejects a couple of keys for weakness reasons.