The message hasn't been encrypted; it only has a digital signature attached
which, as I understand it, is different from the additional measures of
actual encryption.

And, like I mentioned, all of this was NOT necessary when I first installed
Vista/Outlook. I have never had, nor used, a certificate for home. Methinks
there is something else going on. Hopefully we can get to the bottom of this
pretty quick. Thanks for your reply.
--
Rich Turner
Dual Athlon Processor,
Vista-64, Office 2003


"Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]" wrote:

"Rich" wrote in message
...

I've had to reinstall Vista (long story) and have just reinstalled Office
2003 as a part of that effort. I have my first email account set up and
receiving mail and I've also added the security program to help define the
various attachments Outlook will let me see (currently set to all). When
I
send digitally-signed emails to my home account from work, Outlook won't
(can't?) open them.

In order to decrypt something someone sends you, you need installed on the
receiving system a digital certificate whose private key matches the public
key with which the message was encrypted. If you reinstalled your operating
system, you destroyed that certificate and unless you reinstall the
certificate you have no hope of decrypting that message. Did you make a
backup of the certificate before performing the reinstall?

I've sent my security certificate from my computer at work to the
home computer and installed it and still nothing works.

Not surprising. The certificate is specific to the mail address to which
the certificate was issued. The mail address where you work is different
than the mail address at your home and the certificate issued to the one
cannot work for the other.

If you no longer have a certificate for your home address, you'll need to
contact the Certification Authority that issued the original certificate,
have them revoke it, and issue you a new one. You can then install that new
one and send signed messages to anyone with whom you wish to exchange
encrypted mail.
--
Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]