Enigmail Help

How to Resolve Problems with Initializing OpenPGP

There are several reasons why initializing OpenPGP does not succeed. The most common ones are described below; for more information please visit the Enigmail Support page.

GnuPG could not be found

In order for OpenPGP to work, the tool GnuPG needs to be installed. If GnuPG cannot be found, then first make sure that the executable gpg.exe (on Windows; gpg on other platforms) is installed on your computer. If GnuPG is installed, and OpenPGP cannot find it, then you need to manually set the path to GnuPG in the OpenPGP Preferences (menu OpenPGP > Preferences)

Enigmime failed to initialize

OpenPGP works only if it is built using the same build environment as Thunderbird or SeaMonkey was built. This means that you can use the official Enigmail releases only if you use the official releases of Thunderbird or SeaMonkey provided by mozilla.org.

If you use a Thunderbird or SeaMonkey version coming from some other source (e.g. the provider of your Linux distribution), or if you built the application yourself, you should either use an Enigmail version built by the same source, or build Enigmail yourself. For building Enigmail, refer to the Source Code section on the Enigmail home page. Please don't file any bug report concerning this problem, it is not solvable.


Further help is available on the Enigmail Support Web Site.