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If you are an Office 365 user, either at SUNY New Paltz or another institution, these instructions apply. If you use an email system other than Microsoft 365, see the Related Article on this page titled "Opening Encrypted Email - Non-Microsoft 365 users".
Things to be aware of BEFORE opening encrypted email
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Just because an attachment is encrypted, doesn't mean that it is safe. You should be just as cautious in opening attachments in encrypted messages, as you are for unencrypted messages. If you aren't expecting the attachment, you should check with the sender (via phone, or in person if possible) about whether the attachment is legitimate.
- Once you receive the message you can download any attachments to your computer. They will then be unencrypted. For security reasons, you may want to keep any attachments within the email instead of saving/keeping them on your computer.
Opening Encrypted Email
If you're an Microsoft 365 user at New Paltz (or at another organization) it should be relatively straightforward to open encrypted mail sent via Microsoft 365. You should just open the message as normal.
When you receive an encrypted email from Microsoft 365, it will look like one of the following images:
Outlook - Web version
In Outlook's web version - you'll see the red circle with a line through it in the list of messages (as with the two messages in the image below). You'll also see the text stating "Encrypt: This message is encrypted. Recipients can't remove encryption".
If you're using the web version of Outlook - the message should automatically be visible as soon as you open it.
Outlook - Desktop Version
As with the web version - you'll see the red circle with a line through it in the list of messages, and the status message stating that the message is encrypted (below the subject/recipient lines). The indicators are highlighted in red in the image below.
Outlook - Mobile Verision
The indiciation on the mobile version is the small "Encrypt" text in red shown below the recipient/sender/subject.
