Menu items are grayed out in the GroupWise Email client after installing PGP Desktop 9.x.

Products

• Symantec Products

Issue/Introduction

Menu items are grayed out in the GroupWise Email client after installing PGP Desktop 9.x. 
 

Note: This answer pertains to PGP Desktop 9.0.x and above running in Windows 2000, XP, or Server 2003 with Novel GroupWise 6.5.1 or later.

 

Resolution

 

Caution: The PGP Desktop plug-in for GroupWise email client does not support html email formatting. If html formatting is used, the GroupWise client will produce an error and email will not function properly. Be sure to change the email formatting to plain-text only. Also, if an html message is received, the error will also appear.

 

Cause

PGP Desktop installs a more advanced type of plug-in to integrate into the Novel GroupWise email client. Because this plug-in is more advanced, it functions differently than typical email plug-ins and ties into email functionality directly and changes some of the GroupWise menu item functions.

The PGP Desktop software can encrypt and decrypt email by using the plug-ins if the GroupWise proprietary protocol is being used which is not supported by the PGP Email proxy for automatic email encryption.

Once PGP Desktop has been installed, it installs a PGP menu item in the GroupWise menu bar and also in the email when it is opened. When a message is received encrypted, the PGP plug-in for GroupWise can automatically decrypt the message by opening the email.

Once a message has been opened, the reply, forward and other menu items are grayed out and cannot be used.

To use these menu items, pull down the PGP menu, and select Show Original.

If the message was encrypted, the message will re-encrypt before sending by using the Show Original option.
A Workaround to having to click the Show Original option from the menu is to disable Auto Decrypt for GroupWise within the PGP preference file:

 

1. Close GroupWise
2. Locate the file PGPprefs.xml found in C:\Documents and Settings\User Profile\Application Data\PGP Corporation\PGP
3. Open the PGPprefs.xml file with a text editor such as WordPad (Notepad will not work properly).
4. Search for the following string <key>autoDecrypt</key> and change from <true></true> to <false></false>
5. Save the changes to PGPprefs.xml
6. Re-open GroupWise
7. Now all encrypted emails will remain encrypted, until the PGP menu item is used to decrypt the message.
   
   If the PGP GroupWise plug-ins are not wanted for email encryption and decryption, click here to remove the GroupWise plug-ins.