after trying to send an encrypted e-mail to a user without a key and fetching it via WKD (using kleopatra), the mail editor still didn't know about the imported key. even after closing the editor window and opening a new one, the key is still unavailable. only after shutting down the local client and restarting it, the list of available keys was refreshed and the e-mail could be sent.
the client needs to refresh the list of available keys more often than just once during startup.