Configure default mail client

Question

Hi,

How can I change the default mail client in Windows from a Endpoint Manager policy ?
I want to change it to Outlook.

/Andy

Answer 1

@andreas bright Thanks for posting in our Q&A. From your description, I know you want to change the default email client to outlook. If there’s any misunderstanding, feel free to let us know.

I have done the test in my lab. Here are the detailed steps for the reference:

1. Select a windows10 test machine , navigate to Settings > Apps > Default apps and configure the email default app to outlook;
2. Open cmd as administrator and run command: Dism /Online /Export-DefaultAppAssociations:c:\DefAppAss.xml. This can export the required app association file.
   
3. Only keep the following part in this XML file which configure the default app for email.
   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   <DefaultAssociations>
   <Association Identifier="mailto" ProgId="Outlook.URL.mailto.15" ApplicationName="Outlook" />
   </DefaultAssociations>
4. Open the Base64 encoder and encode the content in the previous step to Base64 format. The result in Base64 format is the OMA-URI value. Here is the Base64 encoder I used:
   https://www.base64encode.net/
   Note: Non-Microsoft link, just for the reference.
   
5. Go to Microsoft Endpoint manager admin center. Create a custom profile and deploy this profile to the group you want.
   Name : Set a name for this profile.
   OMA-URI setting: ./Vendor/MSFT/Policy/Config/ApplicationDefaults/DefaultAssociationsConfiguration
   Data Type: String
   Value (The value is gotten from step 4 ) :
   PD94bWwgdmVyc2lvbj0iMS4wIiBlbmNvZGluZz0iVVRGLTgiPz4NCjxEZWZhdWx0QXNzb2NpYXRpb25zPiANCiAgPEFzc29jaWF0aW9uIElkZW50aWZpZXI9Im1haWx0byIgUHJvZ0lkPSJPdXRsb29rLlVSTC5tYWlsdG8uMTUiIEFwcGxpY2F0aW9uTmFtZT0iT3V0bG9vayIgLz4NCjwvRGVmYXVsdEFzc29jaWF0aW9ucz4=
   
6. After the profile deploy successfully, try to restart this device. We can find the email default app has be changed to outlook.
   

Hope it can help.

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Answer 2

The only way I am aware of is using the OMA CSP DefaultAssociationsConfiguration, exported xml and a base64 encoder.