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

Question

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

Answer 1

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

mailto subject example:

<a href="mailto:[email protected]?subject=free chocolate">example</a>

mailto with content:

<a href="mailto:[email protected]?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

Answer 2

<a href="mailto:[email protected]?subject=Feedback for 
webdevelopersnotes.com&body=The Tips and Tricks section is great
&[email protected]
&[email protected]">Send me an email</a>

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

Answer 3

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:[email protected]?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:[email protected]?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>";
?>

Answer 4

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

Answer 5

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:[email protected]?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:[email protected]?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:[email protected]?subject=testing out mailto&body=Just testing&[email protected]&[email protected]">Third
    Example</a>

How to add subject to mailto tag

Answer 6

mailto:[email protected]?subject=Your+subject

Answer 7

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

<a href="

    mailto:[email protected]

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

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

    &[email protected]

    &[email protected]

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

Answer 8

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

<a href="mailto:[email protected]?subject=Your+tip+on+mailto+links&body=Thanks+for+this+tip">tell a friend</a>

Answer 9

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.

Answer 10

Yes, you can like this:

mailto: [email protected]?subject=something

Answer 11

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

Answer 12

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>

Answer 13

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.