Can I set subject/content of email using mailto:?

Question

Is it possible to set the subject/content of email when I use mailto:?

You can set each and every part of an email. Here's a tool I built to make it dead simple: https://mailto.now.sh — Dawson B, Nov 08 '17 at 23:02

score 1565 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 30 '19 at 11:16

1565

Yes, look all tips and tricks with mailto: http://www.angelfire.com/dc/html-webmaster/mailto.htm

mailto subject example:

<a href="mailto:no-one@snai1mai1.com?subject=free chocolate">example</a>

mailto with content:

<a href="mailto:no-one@snai1mai1.com?subject=look at this website&body=Hi,I found this website and thought you might like it http://www.geocities.com/wowhtml/">tell a friend</a>

As alluded to in the comments, both subject and body must be escaped properly. Use encodeURIComponent(subject) on each, rather than hand-coding for specific cases.

As Hoody mentioned in the comments, you can add line breaks by adding the following encoded sequence in the string:

%0D%0A // one line break

edited Oct 30 '19 at 11:16

Esko

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answered Jan 24 '11 at 12:42

Haim Evgi

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is it possible to use HTML for the body? – Jiew Meng Jan 25 '11 at 03:33
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That is entirely client specific. In the general case, no. – tripleee May 16 '13 at 03:50
You may be able to add HTML into the body if you URL encode the entire string. You'd need to test and make sure it works well in a majority of email clients. – jocull Aug 05 '13 at 19:49
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Just as a reference: you don't have to htmlescape the subject – Oscar Pérez Dec 09 '13 at 14:17
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Does anyone know a reference that outlines the mail client support for this? – Simon East Mar 18 '14 at 01:07
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Note that W3C requires that you encode your string following those rules : _Characters should be represented in NFC and spaces should be escaped as %20._ – gordie Jan 19 '15 at 23:41
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That angelfire.com link is unavailable. Can you find a replacement for it? If not, it may be removed from the answer. What information were there? – dakab Jun 16 '16 at 07:28
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i can acsess the link, what you see – Haim Evgi Jun 19 '16 at 07:56
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You know this angelfire link is probably 15 years old, right? – Capsule Aug 25 '16 at 03:36
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is there still a 256 char limit to the mailto string? – Namkce Dec 05 '17 at 16:59
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+one for the retro Angelfire and Geocities links that gave me a huge rush of nostalgia – superphonic Dec 07 '17 at 14:27
@tripleee what about the RFC mentioned at: https://stackoverflow.com/a/41365892/895245 – Ciro Santilli新疆棉花TRUMP BAN BAD Mar 04 '18 at 12:25
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@CiroSantilli Indeed, five years later, client support is considerably more widespread, but still not entirely reliable in my experience. – tripleee Mar 04 '18 at 14:03
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Here's a tool that does it all for you(Subject, Body, URL Encoding, Line Breaks) https://email-link-builder.netlify.com – Sam Carlton Dec 13 '18 at 23:21

score 129 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 24 '11 at 12:44

<a href="mailto:manish@simplygraphix.com?subject=Feedback for 
webdevelopersnotes.com&body=The Tips and Tricks section is great
&cc=anotheremailaddress@anotherdomain.com
&bcc=onemore@anotherdomain.com">Send me an email</a>

you can use this code to set subject, body, cc, bcc

William Entriken · Answer 3 · 2019-09-03T22:35:03.160

The mailto: URL scheme is defined in RFC 2368. Also, the convention for encoding information into URLs and URIs is defined in RFC 1738 and then RFC 3986. These prescribe how to include the body and subject headers into a URL (URI):

mailto:infobot@example.com?subject=current-issue&body=send%20current-issue

Specifically, you must percent-encode the email address, subject, and body and put them into the format above. Percent-encoded text is legal for use in HTML, however this URL must be entity encoded for use in an href attribute, according to the HTML4 standard:

<a href="mailto:infobot@example.com?subject=current-issue&amp;body=send%20current-issue">Send email</a>

And most generally, here is a simple PHP script that encodes per the above.

<?php
$encodedTo = rawurlencode($message->to);
$encodedSubject = rawurlencode($message->subject);
$encodedBody = rawurlencode($message->body);
$uri = "mailto:$encodedTo?subject=$encodedSubject&body=$encodedBody";
$encodedUri = htmlspecialchars($uri);
echo "<a href=\"$encodedUri\">Send email</a>";
?>

Here is a much deeper example for if your email has a URL in it and that URL has stuff that needs to be encoded: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4744888/how-to-properly-url-encode-a-string-in-php/48267785#48267785 — William Entriken, Jan 18 '18 at 15:57

Dawson B · Answer 4 · 2020-05-10T14:07:14.153

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I created an open-source tool for making this easy. Enter the strings you want and you'll instantly get the mailto:

mailto.now.sh

⚡️ Template full emails in a mailto

edited May 10 '20 at 14:07

answered Apr 21 '19 at 06:53

Dawson B

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score 26 · Answer 5 · answered May 16 '13 at 02:46

You can add subject added to the mailto command using either one of the following ways. Add ?subject out mailto to the mailto tag.

<a href="mailto:test@example.com?subject=testing out mailto">First Example</a>

We can also add text into the body of the message by adding &body to the end of the tag as shown in the below example.

 <a href="mailto:test@example.com?subject=testing out mailto&body=Just testing">Second Example</a>

In addition to body, a user may also type &cc or &bcc to fill out the CC and BCC fields.

<a href="mailto:test@example.com?subject=testing out mailto&body=Just testing&cc=test1@example.com&bcc=test1@example.com">Third
    Example</a>

How to add subject to mailto tag

score 13 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 24 '11 at 12:43

13

mailto:joe@company.com?subject=Your+subject

answered Jan 24 '11 at 12:43

payne

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My `subject` is not text. It is a table. How to add that. – David Jul 08 '16 at 04:26
@David You cannot put a table on a subject, do you know how email subjects work? Subjects are plain-text strings. The maximum out of the basic stuff you can put on a subject is emojis – Macumbaomuerte Oct 10 '20 at 11:57

score 9 · Answer 7 · answered Jan 27 '16 at 14:11

9

I split it into separate lines to make it a little more readable.

<a href="

    mailto:johndoe@gmail.com

    ?subject=My+great+email+to+you

    &body=This+is+an+awesome+email

    &cc=janedoe@gmail.com

    &bcc=billybob@yahoo.com

">Click here to send email!</a>

answered Jan 27 '16 at 14:11

quemeful

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this question was answered 5 years ago – varun aaruru Jan 27 '16 at 14:14
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and it still is used today when you wanna mail something – quemeful Jan 27 '16 at 22:20

score 7 · Answer 8 · answered Oct 27 '14 at 07:12

7

here is the trick http://neworganizing.com/content/blog/tip-prepopulate-mailto-links-with-subject-body-text

<a href="mailto:tips@neworganizing.com?subject=Your+tip+on+mailto+links&body=Thanks+for+this+tip">tell a friend</a>

answered Oct 27 '14 at 07:12

Arun Kushwaha

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is the + needed instead of spaces? works fine without on gmail – SuperUberDuper Jun 28 '19 at 10:07
Link is dead now – Peter Johnson Oct 14 '20 at 10:51
link doesn't work, try https://qawithexperts.com/article/html/how-to-create-mailto-html-anchor-tag-link-including-subject/243 To get of using details of mailto in anchor tag – Vikas Lalwani Oct 14 '20 at 13:58

score 7 · Answer 9 · edited Aug 11 '16 at 08:37

7

Yes:

Use this to experiment with mailto form elements and link encoding.

You can enter subject, body (i.e. content), etc. into the form, hit the button and see the mailto html link that you can paste into your page.

You can even specify elements that are rarely known and used: cc, bcc, from emails.

edited Aug 11 '16 at 08:37

NEER

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answered Jun 19 '15 at 00:28

woz

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Also a very useful feature of this href field composer is the ability to encode all characters to hexadecimal (e.g.: `[Test Zõne]` becomes `%5BTest%20Z%C3%B5ne%5D`, this may avoid some spam bots). – Armfoot Aug 28 '15 at 15:50
I mean, if you choose to encode all characters, they are all converted to HTML notation `` (avoiding some spam bots). – Armfoot Aug 28 '15 at 15:58
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This link is dead. – Bram Vanroy Sep 05 '18 at 12:37

score 5 · Answer 10 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:03

5

Note that it is not possible to use HTML in the message body, according to RFC 2368:

The special hname "body" indicates that the associated hvalue is the body of the message. The "body" hname should contain the content for the first text/plain body part of the message. The mailto URL is primarily intended for generation of short text messages that are actually the content of automatic processing (such as "subscribe" messages for mailing lists), not general MIME bodies.

Credit: https://stackoverflow.com/a/13415988/1835519

edited May 23 '17 at 12:03

Community

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answered Aug 01 '16 at 10:46

Jure Sah

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The question is asking how to set the subject and content. It didn't mention formatting. While that is a useful thing to note on an answer, you left out the bit about what *is* possible and how to achieve it. Without that, this is a comment, not an answer. – Quentin Aug 10 '16 at 19:25
Jure I really appreciate you putting this as an answer to this question as that is EXACTLY what I needed to find out and was asking myself. So while Quentin thinks this doesn't answer the OP question, it answers mine that I was searching for that brought up this post. Thank you so much Jure! – user1567291 Dec 14 '18 at 17:53

score 5 · Answer 11 · answered Jan 24 '11 at 12:43

5

Yes, you can like this:

mailto: email@host.com?subject=something

answered Jan 24 '11 at 12:43

MeanEYE

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I don't think the space should be there? – nafg Dec 19 '16 at 22:01
this should be without space. – Hassan Raza Feb 28 '20 at 10:09

score 3 · Answer 12 · answered Oct 10 '18 at 01:09

Here's a runnable snippet to help you generate mailto: links with optional subject and body.

function generate() {
  var email = $('#email').val();
  var subject = $('#subject').val();
  var body = $('#body').val();

  var mailto = 'mailto:' + email;
  var params = {};
  if (subject) {
    params.subject = subject;
  }
  if (body) {
    params.body = body;
  }
  if (params) {
    mailto += '?' + $.param(params);
  }

  var $output = $('#output');
  $output.val(mailto);
  $output.focus();
  $output.select();
  document.execCommand('copy');
}

$(document).ready(function() {
  $('#generate').on('click', generate);
});

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<input type="text" id="email" placeholder="email address" /><br/>
<input type="text" id="subject" placeholder="Subject" /><br/>
<textarea id="body" placeholder="Body"></textarea><br/>
<button type="button" id="generate">Generate & copy to clipboard</button><br/>
<textarea id="output">Output</textarea>

score 1 · Answer 13 · answered Jan 29 '16 at 11:54

1

If you want to add html content to your email, url encode your html code for the message body and include it in your mailto link code, but trouble is you can't set the type of the email from this link from plaintext to html, the client using the link needs their mail client to send html emails by default. In case you want to test here is the code for a simple mailto link, with an image wrapped in a link (angular style urls added for visibility):

<a href="mailto:?body=%3Ca%20href%3D%22{{ scope.url }}%22%3E%3Cimg%20src%3D%22{{ scope.url }}%22%20width%3D%22300%22%20%2F%3E%3C%2Fa%3E">

The html tags are url encoded.

answered Jan 29 '16 at 11:54

serdarsenay

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Can you also post an example where the body just has the href and a text between it and the end tag? Thanks – user1567291 Dec 14 '18 at 17:54
This is the link text @user1567291 – serdarsenay Dec 15 '18 at 17:45
This doesn't work. The email client will just show all the html tags as text instead of processing it as a rich text document. – Ε Г И І И О Jan 09 '20 at 14:34

Can I set subject/content of email using mailto:?

13 Answers13

mailto.now.sh

Linked

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