Enigmail in thunderbird decrypt to folder option not saving a decrypted copy
I have a test email that a friend sent me which was encrypted with PGP and when I right click on it and select to "decrypt to folder" and choose a local folder the produced email at that folder remains encrypted because when viewing it it flashes the pgp ciphertext briefly before becoming decrypted by enigmail and showing the content and if I clear my passphrase from enigmail and then switch to that email it then prompts me for my password because it's still encrypted.
I would expect it to not ask for a password to decrypt it since it should already be just plaintext by that point.
Chosen solution
Turns out the issue was that my friend had encrypted the message externally of their email client and then just pasted the ciphertext into the body of a normal email and then sent that to me, and then on my device enigmail automatically noticed that the content of the email contained pgp encrypted message and so automatically prompted me for the password to decrypt, when the password isn't supplied the email shows the pgp encrypted ciphertext in the message body.
This is in contrast to another email that was properly encrypted (s/MIME) and for which doesn't show anything in the body if the passphrase isn't supplied and it can't be decrypted because the email itself is encrypted!
When it is the email itself that is encrypted the "decrypt to folder" option works as expected. If the sender just pasted their "-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----- Version: GnuPG v1…" text into the body of their email and then send it to you, then technically the email itself is not encrypted, only a part of its content happens to be, in this case, as expected, enigmail can't produce a decrypted copy of the email.
I just got confused because the behavior of enigmail seemed to be the same for both of those emails.
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Chosen Solution
Turns out the issue was that my friend had encrypted the message externally of their email client and then just pasted the ciphertext into the body of a normal email and then sent that to me, and then on my device enigmail automatically noticed that the content of the email contained pgp encrypted message and so automatically prompted me for the password to decrypt, when the password isn't supplied the email shows the pgp encrypted ciphertext in the message body.
This is in contrast to another email that was properly encrypted (s/MIME) and for which doesn't show anything in the body if the passphrase isn't supplied and it can't be decrypted because the email itself is encrypted!
When it is the email itself that is encrypted the "decrypt to folder" option works as expected. If the sender just pasted their "-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----- Version: GnuPG v1…" text into the body of their email and then send it to you, then technically the email itself is not encrypted, only a part of its content happens to be, in this case, as expected, enigmail can't produce a decrypted copy of the email.
I just got confused because the behavior of enigmail seemed to be the same for both of those emails.