Creating a new email in Outlook including email body text

Question

On a corporate intranet where all of our users are using Outlook 2003 I have a need to allow a user to click a link that opens a new email window with a prepopulated message body, subject and To line. The body text requirement eliminates a simple option like a MailTo link.

I know there is an EML format Outlook uses, but I don't see how to use it to open a message that displays like a new email message being sent by the user. It seems to just be a format for archiving emails in a regular folder.

Are there other options? Other file formats?

Answer 1

you CAN use mailto and have a message in the body.

http://www.ianr.unl.edu/internet/mailto.html

Answer 2

This isn't supported properly across other mail clients/webmail clients but if Outlook is your only audience you can try the following:

<a href="mailto:[email protected]&#046;co&#046;uk?subject=Your Email Subject&amp;body=This is the first line and then a line break%0AThis is the second line">Link</a>

You need to ensure that any characters are encoded properly (full stops, ampersands etc)