how do i retrieve secret key?

[genny]

Maybe it's just because I don't understand how this all works....

I set up encryption using enigmail on one computer, so I now have a key pair, and a password set up so that I sign in to encrypt a message with my secret key.

I'm now setting up enigmail on a second computer. I've downloaded my public key from a keyserver, but can't work out how to set up the secret bit again. I thought I could just sign the public key using my password, but when I try to do this, using key management/edit/sign key, there is nothing in the box: key to be signed, so maybe that's not the right thing to do.

Any help/advice/pointers to where this info can be found would be much appreciated.

Ta

Genny

[dan]

Your post shows quite a bit of confusion.
You encrypt messages using the recipient's public key, not yours. You use your secret key (along with your passphrase) to decrypt messages sent to you, or to sign your messages. The recipient then can verify your signature by using your public key.
To use Enigmail on another computer, you have to import your key pair (= your secret key + your public key) to it, and this is done via the menu item OpenPGP -> Key Management.
There is no "secret bit" you can set to transform a public key into a secret one. The secret key cannot be recovered from the public key (although many neophytes seem to think so, as they disdain publishing their public key as an insecure practice and would prefer symmetric cryptography instead!).