OL98: How Do I Make Outlook My Default MailTo Handler?

Microsoft Windows 95/98 allow you to specify a default mail program. One benefit of this is that you can open a mail form with a preaddressed message, using the MailTo link found in other messages and on Web pages.

This article describes how to designate Microsoft Outlook as the default mail program.

NOTE: Because there are several versions of Windows, the following steps may be different on your computer. If they are, please consult your product documentation to complete these steps.

To designate Outlook as your default e-mail program, follow these steps:

1. In Windows, double-click the My Computer icon.
2. In My Computer, click Options (Windows 95) or Folder Options (Windows 98 and NT 4.0) on the View menu.
3. Click the File Types tab. Under Registered File Types, click to select URL:MailToProtocol, and then click Edit.
4. In the Actions list, click Open, and then click Edit.
5. Press DELETE to delete the text in the "Application used to perform action" box, and type the following text as a single line (including the quotation marks) in the box:
   "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\OUTLOOK.EXE" -c IPM.Note /m "%1"
6. To save the changes, click OK, and then click Close twice to return to My Computer.