mailto Protocol
Opens a client's e-mail system and begins a new email message.
Syntax
mailto:sAddress[sHeaders]
Tokens
- sAddress
- One or more valid e-mail addresses separated by a semicolon. You must use Internet-safe characters, such as %20 for the space character.
- sHeaders
- Optional. One or more name-value pairs. The first pair should be prefixed by a "?" and any additional pairs should be prefixed by a "&". The name can be one of the following strings.
subject- Text to appear in the subject line of the message.
body- Text to appear in the body of the message.
CC- Addresses to be included in the "cc" (carbon copy) section of the message.
BCC- Addresses to be included in the "bcc" (blind carbon copy) section of the message.
Remarks
Windows Internet Explorer 7 and later. You must percent-encode all URL-reserved characters within a mailto: address. For example, the number sign (#) is used as a fragment identifier in URLs. When processing an address such as
some#one@example.com, Internet Explorer copies only the portion up to the number sign into the mail client; the fragment portion including the number sign is ignored. This behavior is by design.For more information on the mailto protocol, see RFC2368: The mailto URL scheme.
Examples
The following example shows a mailto URL that will prepare an e-mail message when typed into the Internet Explorer address bar.
mailto:user@example.com?subject=Message Title&body=Message ContentThe following example shows a link that will prepare an e-mail message.
<a href="mailto:user@example.com? subject=MessageTitle& body=Message Content"> Contact Us</a>The following example shows how to use an HTML form to create an e-mail message.
<form action="mailto:user@example.com" method="get"> <input name="subject" type="hidden" value="Message Title"> Feedback:<br/> <textarea name=body cols="40"> Please share your thoughts here and then choose Send Feedback. </textarea> <input type="submit" value="Send Feedback"> </form>
- 1/12/2012
- Mark235
It appears that there is a limitation. I would happily retract my response if someone can show otherwise.
In the following anchor, the href field is 512 characters long. One character longer and no email is generated, IE becomes unstable.
<a href="mailto:name@name.com?subject=123456789&body=111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111234">this is the limit of mailto on Outlook and IE8</a>
Esther Fan, MSFT: Thank you for your comments. For these kinds of questions, please try the following forums:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/iedevelopment
- 2/11/2010
- MedicineMan
- 7/23/2010
- Esther Fan
How can you attach files in Outlook 2007? I tried the double quotes and everything else i can think of but have gotten nowhere.
btw, when i use the double quotes, i get an error message saing the command line argument is not valid and i should verify the switch i am using.
i have no idea what this means, but any other time i just get an email with no attachment.
please help me
Esther Fan, MSFT: Thank you for your comments. For these kinds of questions, please try the following forums:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/iedevelopment
- 7/22/2010
- helloeveryoneimcarl
- 7/23/2010
- Esther Fan
%0D%0A).
- 3/3/2008
- JK6
- 11/22/2009
- Thomas Lee
- 9/23/2009
- Kurt L Hudson
Outlook 2003 mailto:'s "&Attachment" tag relies on double quotes:
<a href='mailto:name@domain.com?Subject=SubjTxt&Body=Bod_Txt&Attachment=""C:\file.txt"" '>
Attach with double-quotes!
</a>
- 1/6/2009
- danielszabo1981
There is no official way to attach files using "mailto" protocol. Most likely because of the security reasons.
However some email clients do accept the attachment parameter with the file in quotes i.e. attachment="C:\fileName.txt" such as outlook 98.
- 1/30/2008
- adam_m
- 1/6/2009
- danielszabo1981