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Summary: The 'mailto:' or default mail program is a concept maintained by Windows and changed using Internet Explorer. Usually. We examine how to change the default mail program to a couple of popular services. When viewing some web sites, I want to send them an email for whatever reason. I click, "contact us", a window opens and I type my question. When I press, "send", I realize that the email is being sent using Outlook, and as a result I asked to setup a POP address etc. I prefer to send and receive my messages using my Yahoo account. Can you tell me how I can set it up so that when sending a message as explained above, yahoo will come up as my email carrier? It's not that hard to change the system default mail program to one of a pre-defined list of applications. Not surprisingly, HotMail and Outlook Express are among the default choices. If you want something else, like GMail or Yahoo Mail, things get a little more interesting. • First the easy part. The system has a notion of a "default" email client. That means this is the email program that will be used when a generic request to deal with email is received. The most common type of request is the HTML "mailto:" action you'll see on web pages. If a link is encoded with "mailto:" instead of "http:" when someone clicks on it the browser will fire up the default mail client for that user to compose a new email message. In your case your system's default email client is obviously Outlook. To change it, fire up Internet Explorer, hit the Tools menu, the Internet Options... menu item, and then click on the Programs tab. You should see something like this:
If you then click on the E-mail: dropdown, you'll see the full list of available options:
"The system has a notion of a 'default' email client ...
the email program that will be used when a generic request to deal with email
is received."
Simply select the email program you want to be the default program, and you're all set. It's that simple, right? Nope. I can hear several of you yelling at your computers right now: "Why doesn't my list show Yahoo Mail like in the example!?". Well, the "problem" is that something needs to be installed or set up on your system in order to make those options available. You'll notice that Thunderbird is on my list as well, and that showed up after I installed Thunderbird. Yahoo was added to my list after I installed Yahoo Instant Messenger. Installing YIM actually has the potential to install quite a bit, so I definitely advise selecting the "custom" install and paying close attention to all the install options. I turned many things off, but left "Browser Services" checked, which I believe includes the feature we want:
But what about GMail? GMail actually doesn't show up on my list, and yet it is my current default mail program. To do this, I installed the GMail Notifier. It's a handy little utility that notifies you when you have new GMail messages. And as I found out, one of the configuration options during the installation is to set GMail as the default mail handler:
That option is available again in the Notifier when it's running, so you can reset it properly should it ever get changed. Now, as to why it doesn't show up in Internet Explorer's options list - I have no idea. Related:
• Recent Comments
Nothing like this in Vista, Leo. I still don't how to make Windows Mail show as the default mail handler, when on a website, while wanting to send the site or something in it. Only Gmail and Blogger show when I click on SEND TO. Ive read the article twice, cannot see that it applies in Vista? Posted by: Mike at April 19, 2008 12:59 PM-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I'll write a full article on it sometime, but in short for - - Control Panel Leo
iD8DBQFIC5iuCMEe9B/8oqERAsWqAJ9oOrFou+8K1FyNxW0DQP/ONc00IACeM8o+ What about in XP when you click on an image and select "Send to -> Mail recipient"? GMail Notifier doesn't help here. Windows still wants to use Outlook. Posted by: Rob at April 26, 2008 10:33 PMIve done everything that Im supposed to and whenever I click on something to send an email I get an error. Its a RUNDLL error. it says: Error loading C:\PROGRA~1\YAHOO!\COMMON\YMMAPI.DLL A device attached to the system is not functioning. Posted by: JD at May 15, 2008 12:57 AMLeo, I think what everyone here is asking you is, where on the computer (registry, dll's, etc;) do you go (C:\windows\thatfile\thatplace\tofix.it_)to to edit the email section in your example at the top of this page. When you find out, send me that information, If I find it, I'll send it to you. Thanks. Mr. A Collins. (i.e. DaddyWarbucks) Posted by: DaddyWarbucks at June 6, 2008 10:47 PMI did the above, changed the default mail client to Outlook Express, but when I apply and click an e-mail link in Internet Explorer, I find my default mail client has changed BACK to hotmail. This is driving me nuts, can anyone help please? Posted by: Luke Jennings at June 10, 2008 08:39 AMI had problems in getting gmail to be my default mail client. I had gmail notifier already installed and when I went into the options, there was already a check mark on "Use Gmail for Internet Mailto." After trial and error, I finally reistalled the notifier, checked the appropriat boxes as listed above, and then Gmail was my default email client. Leo, I am currently running Gmail Notifier, so I am all set with mailto: in my browser (Firefox). Now the question is how I can accomplish the same thing in Microsoft Word. In Word, I often use File - Send As (Attachment). No matter what I try, this still fires up Outlook. To make things worse, it also seems to make mailto: in Firefox revert back to Outlook. Anyone have an idea how to fix this? Thanks. Post a comment on "How do I change the "mailto:" or default mail program?":
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