This document provides some basic information on using Enigmail. If you encounter unexpected problems, you should also check the Troubleshooting page.
Select the OpenPGP Security menu item below the account you want to configure.
If you're lost with setting up or using GPG, think about joining the PGP-Basics group who have some excellent online documents to help new users set up GPG on Windows. There is also a GnuPG Users group who offer friendly and knowledgeable support specifically for GnuPG.
If you want to switch from PGP to GPG, you can take over all your keys into GPG. In order to do this, export your public keys and your private keys from PGP as ASCII armored files. You can then import your keys in GPG using the command gpg --import filename.asc.
If you do not have keyserver-options auto-key-retrieve set in your gpg.conf file and you read a message which is signed or encrypted, you will see a Pen icon in the headers display area with a Question mark on it, the Enigmail status line in the headers area will say Part of the message signed; click pen icon for details and the message in the Message Pane will show all the PGP message block indicators and the signature block.
You may also see this if you have keyserver-options auto-key-retrieve set in your gpg.conf file and the PGP key is not available on the default keyserver.
Clicking on the Pen and Question mark icon will bring up a window advising that the key is unavailable in your keyring. Clicking on OK will bring up another window with a list of keyservers which you can select to download the sender's public key from.
To configure the list of keyservers you wish to use, go to Enigmail -> Preferences -> Basic tab and enter the keyserver addresses in the Keyserver(s): box, separated by a comma. The first keyserver in the list will be used as the default.
If Display selection when necessary is set in Preferences -> Key Selection tab, a list of keys will pop up if there are addresses in the list of recipients for the message for whom you have no public key.
If Never display PGP key selection dialog is set in Preferences -> Key Selection tab, and there are addresses in the list of recipients for the message for whom you have no public key, the message will be sent unencrypted.
If you know the recipient(s) can read mail using the PGP/MIME format, you should use it.
This feature is dependent on the settings in Preferences -> PGP/MIME tab being set to Allow to use PGP/MIME or Always use PGP/MIME.