Yep, make sure the message is properly formatted. Even if you copied everything correctly, the sender may have missed a dash. Count the dashes and make sure there are five on each side of the first and last lines. If some are missing, you can add them manually. Make sure the message has this format: 1. It starts with: -----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----- 2. It has 0 to 3 metadata lines, such as Version, Comment, or Charset. I'm not sure if it can have more than 3, but I've never seen it. 3. The next line is blank, and it is only one blank line (not 2 or 3). In the case of 0 metadata lines, the blank line immediately follows the dashed line. 4. It ends with: -----END PGP MESSAGE----- There could also be an encoding/charset problem, especially since Windows, Mac and Linux treat newlines / return characters differently. Sometimes it helps to copy the message into a text editor and save it with the default for your operating system, then open the text file and copy the message from there.