Stump the PC Club is a free tech-advice column written by members of the North Orange County Computer Club, which has been in existence since 1976. Visit the club’s site at noccc.org.
QUESTION: I’m using Windows 7 and I E-mail the same person frequently. Is there a way to create a shortcut on the Desktop for this?
PC CLUB: You can certainly do this. You can place a shortcut on the Desktop that when opened, a message will open in your default E-mail program already addressed and ready to go. In fact, you can have a default subject if you wish. Here are the steps:
1. Right-click an open area of the Windows desktop and select "New".
2. In the "New" submenu, click on "Shortcut". The "Create Shortcut" window will appear.
3. In the field labeled "Type the location of the item", enter "mailto:" immediately followed by the email address you would like to use.
4. Click "Next" and give your new shortcut a suitable name
5. Click Finish
The above instructions describe how to create a basic email shortcut. However, you can also add more to your mailto: line in order to expand the functionality of your email shortcuts:
Multiple recipients:
Separate the email addresses with commas like this –
mailto:[email protected],[email protected],[email protected]
Add Text to the body:
You can add a subject and text to the body of the email like this:
mailto: [email protected]?subject=Today’s Joke &body=Here is today’s joke!
For more examples see http://www.ianr.unl.edu/internet/mailto.html.
Note:
If you want to modify an existing email shortcut, simply right-click the shortcut icon and select "Properties".
You can also create multiple shortcuts if you want to use this with several recipients. After creating several of these you can place them all in a folder on your Desktop.
This works with XP and Windows 7. However, if you have no default E-mail client on Windows 7 you will have to set one up. See a previous article at http://bit.ly/defaultemail for instructions.
For more automation, right click the Taskbar and select Toolbars, New Toolbar and select the new folder you created. You can also add a keyboard shortcut to any of these shortcuts. Just right-click any of them, select properties and click in the Shortcut key box. Then use your keyboard to add a shortcut such as Ctrl-F12. To create this shortcut press your Control key on your keyboard and tap the F12 key.
Ed Schwartz is a member of the North Orange County Computer Club. To send in a question, go to edwardns.com and click the Contact Me menu. Archives of previous columns are also on the website.