Questions tagged [mailto]

Mailto is the URI scheme that targets the user's client from within the browser. Clicking a mailto link creates a new email message in the user's email client, optionally with to, cc, subject, and body pre-populated.

A mailto link can be inserted into a webpage using a standard anchor link:

• The simplest mailto link specifying a recipient addresses..

  <a href='mailto:someone@host.com'>Click to email</a>
  

• Multiple recipients..

  <a href='mailto:nobody@host.com,nowhere@host.com'>Click to email</a>
  

• Autofill the subject line..

  <a href='mailto:someone@host.com?subject=This%20is%20the%20subject'>Click to email</a>
  

• Autofill the subject line and specify the email to be CC'd to..

  <a href='mailto:someone@host.com?cc=me@me.com&subject=Testing%20mailto&'>Click to email</a>
  

• Mailto 3 people, with a BCC and a subject..

  <a href='mailto:someone@yoursite.com?cc=someoneelse@theirsite.com, another@thatsite.com, me@mysite.com&bcc=lastperson@theirsite.com&subject=Big%20News'>Click to email</a>
  

• Autofill the subject line and body of the email with a linebreak..

  <a href='mailto:someone@host.com?subject=Readme&body=This%20is%20the%20first%20line%0D%0AThis%20is%20the%20second'>Click to email</a>
  

• Add a reply-to address..

  <a href='mailto:someone@host.com?reply-to=me@me.com'>Click to email</a>
  

Special Character escaping

Within mailto URLs, the characters "?", "=", "&" are reserved.

Special characters that appear in addresses, headers or message contents must be encoded using a "%" followed by a two-digit hex number. See RFC3986 for a exhaustive description of URL encodings.

Space = %20             : = %3A         ] = %5D
Line Break = %0D%0A     ; = %3B         { = %7B
" = %22                 ' = %27         } = %7D
# = %23                 < = %3C         \ = %5C
$ = %24                 > = %3E         | = %7C
% = %25                 / = %2F         = = %3D
^ = %5E                 ? = %3F
& = &amp;               [ = %5B

8-bit characters in mailto URLs are forbidden.

More information

• RFC 2368, which defines the mailto scheme.