After disabling Enigmail, you will need to save encrypted messages as files on your hard drive in order to view them later on.

These instructions will work on most desktop operating systems.

1. Select the encrypted message.

2. Click on the hamburger menu (the three horizontal lines).

3. Hover over “Save As” on the left side of the menu pop-up.

4. Click on “File.

5. Choose a name for the file you will remember, keeping the .eml extension. By default, this will be the full subject line from the original email. We recommend a short, one-word name in all lowercase such as “encrypted.eml” to make the command-line step easier.

6. You can place this anywhere on your hard drive that makes the most sense to you, but to simplify following along in our command-line decryption tutorials, we suggest saving on the Desktop.

For instructions on reading the saved .eml file, follow the link below that matches your operating system.

How to read PGP-encrypted email on the command line: