diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index 68ecb9b..5deb70a 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -1,4 +1,9 @@
 venv/
+__pycache__/
 .idea/
-testing.py
+# misc testing scripts
+testing*.py
+# i have a symlink here so testing scripts can import gpgmymail
+# as python expects `import gpgmymail` to be importing `gpgmymail.py`
+gpgmymail.py
 
diff --git a/gpgmymail b/gpgmymail
index a3c230f..21c46e6 100755
--- a/gpgmymail
+++ b/gpgmymail
@@ -49,6 +49,26 @@ def is_message_encrypted(message: email.message.Message) -> bool:
 
     return message.get_content_subtype() == "encrypted"
 
+def decode_email(message: email.message.Message) -> email.message.Message:
+    """Turn a quoted-printable or base64 encoded email into a 7or8bit encoded
+    email
+
+    :param message: email.message.Message to be decoded
+    :return: decoded email.message.Message"""
+    if message.is_multipart():
+        payload = []
+        for part in message.walk():
+            if not part.is_multipart():
+                payload.append(part.get_payload(decode=True))
+
+        message.set_payload(payload)
+    else:
+        message.set_payload(message.get_payload(decode=True))
+
+    message["Content-Transfer-Encoding"] = "7bit"
+
+    return message
+
 def encrypt(
         message: email.message.Message,
         recipients: typing.List[str],
@@ -67,10 +87,14 @@ def encrypt(
 
     :return: The encrypted email as a string"""
     
+    # exclusion criteria:
     # some mail clients like Thunderbird don't like twice-encrypted emails,
     # so we return the message as-is if it's already encrypted
     if is_message_encrypted(message) and not unconditionally_encrypt:
         return message.as_string()
+
+    # make necessary changes to message
+    message = decode_email(message)
     
     gpg = gnupg.GPG()
     gpg.encoding = encoding