mailto Protocol

Opens a client's e-mail system and begins a new email message.

Syntax

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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.

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mailto:user@example.com?subject=Message Title&body=Message Content

The following example shows a link that will prepare an e-mail message.

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<a href="mailto:user@example.com?
    subject=MessageTitle&amp;
    body=Message Content">
    Contact Us</a>

The following example shows how to use an HTML form to create an e-mail message.

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<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>