The Full mailto Link Syntax

For a small project, I had to create a smart mailto link to make my life a bit easier. I wanted the mailto link to hold not only a to and the subject (I’d figured that much out) but a multi-lined body too. Turns out that is pretty darn easy to do. So, for my own reference, and yours, here’s a complete overview of everything possible with a mailto link.

There are a couple of variables you can use, which you’d have to do in standard URL format, remember to properly encode the & if you care about the validity of your HTML, so you use & in that case. Here’s the full mailto link syntax:

[code lang=”html”]<a href="mailto:info@example.com?subject=subject&cc=cc@example.com">mail link</a>[/code]

Here are the variables you can use in mailto links:

mailto:	to set the recipient, or recipients, separate with comma
&cc=	to set the CC recipient(s)
&bcc=	to set the BCC recipient(s)
&subject=	to set the email subject, URL encode for longer sentences, so replace spaces with %20, etc.
&body=	to set the body of the message, you can add entire sentences here, including line breaks. Line breaks should be converted to %0A.

Some mailto link examples

A simple mailto link:

[code lang=”html”]<a href="mailto:info@example.com">mail link</a>[/code]

mailto link with subject:

[code lang=”html”]<a href="mailto:info@example.com?subject=email%20subject">mail link</a>[/code]

mailto link with multiple recipients:

[code lang=”html”]<a href="mailto:info@example.com,email@example.com">mail link</a>[/code]

mailto link with a CC:

[code lang=”html”]<a href="mailto:info@example.com?cc=email2@example.com">mail link</a>[/code]

A mailto link with message body already started:

[code lang=”html”]<a href="mailto:info@example.com?body=these%20mailto%20links%20are%20cool">
e-mail link
</a>[/code]

A mailto link with 3 lines of message body:

[code lang=”html”]<a href="mailto:info@example.com?body=these%20mailto%0Alinks%20are%0Acool">
mail links
</a>[/code]

A mailto link with 3 lines of message body and a BCC:

[code lang=”html”]<a href="mailto:info@example.com?bcc=mail2@example.com
&body=these%20mailto%0Alinks%20are%0Acool">
mailto links
</a>[/code]

As you can see, you can add as many of these as you want and stack them on top of each other. Remember that after the email address you’ll use a question mark to prefix the first variable, and ampersands ( & ) for each consecutive variable.

Happy coding and mailing!