mailto Protocol

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

Syntax

mailto:sAddress[sHeaders]

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 Content

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

<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.

<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>