diff --git a/gpgmymail b/gpgmymail
index e7c6073..41f6813 100755
--- a/gpgmymail
+++ b/gpgmymail
@@ -60,7 +60,6 @@ def decode_email(message: email.message.Message) -> email.message.Message:
     # this is a kinda hacky way to do this by manipulating the message as a
     # string but i couldn't get it to work any other way
     # decoding needed:
-    # as_string() gives us str, encode() gives us bytes
     decoded_bytes = message.as_bytes()
     decoded_bytes = quopri.decodestring(decoded_bytes)
 
@@ -79,26 +78,15 @@ def decode_email(message: email.message.Message) -> email.message.Message:
     # lol
     quopri_decoded_message = email.message_from_bytes(decoded_bytes)
     if quopri_decoded_message.is_multipart():
-        most_recent_boundary = None
         for part in quopri_decoded_message.walk():
-            # multipart and has boundary (not None)
-            if part.is_multipart() and part.get_boundary():
-                most_recent_boundary = part.get_boundary()
-            else:
+            if not part.is_multipart():
                 if part.get("Content-Transfer-Encoding") == "base64":
-                    b64_str = part.get_payload()
-                    # remove the boundary as we don't want to change this
-                    b64_str = b64_str.replace(most_recent_boundary, "")
-                    # sometimes we have leftover hyphens from a boundary, so strip:
-                    # hyphens not in base64 so we know not to use them
-                    # strip whitespace first
-                    b64_str = b64_str.strip()
-                    b64_str = b64_str.strip('-')
-                    b64_str = b64_str.encode()  # turn into bytes-like object
-                    decoded_b64_str = part.get_payload(decode=True)
+                    new_part = part
+                    new_part.replace_header("Content-Transfer-Encoding", "7bit")
+                    new_part.set_payload(part.get_payload(decode=True))
                     decoded_bytes = decoded_bytes.replace(
-                        b64_str,
-                        decoded_b64_str
+                        part.as_bytes(),
+                        new_part.as_bytes()
                     )
     else:
         # TODO
@@ -108,10 +96,8 @@ def decode_email(message: email.message.Message) -> email.message.Message:
         b'Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64',
         b'Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit'
     )
-    
-    # if i do message_from_bytes it bizarrely changes it back to base64?
-    # utf-8 has encoding issues so do latin1
-    return email.message_from_string(decoded_bytes.decode("latin1"))
+
+    return email.message_from_bytes(decoded_bytes)
 
 def encrypt(
         message: email.message.Message,