CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

This issue came up in one of my client installs (D6/Civi3.1.1). The client would create a new email, set options, compose on screen and click Next, whereupon CiviMail would die, leaving only the epitaph "Sorry, a non-recoverable error occurred,  could not find Valid Key". After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, cause of said error was isolated to Microsoft Word. The client was pasting content from Word into the WYSIWYG and not using the "Paste from Word" feature, thus introducing "gremlin characters" that would cause CiviMail to choke.

I thought maybe this little story might help save someone else a bit of trouble-shooting time. When in doubt, first rule MS Word out!