E-mail configuration

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wdln
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Full Name: Dave Lennie
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E-mail configuration

Post by wdln »

Several of you have asked me why the "e-mail" link on member pages does not work when you click on it. What this is supposed to do is launch a new e-mail message to the person using the default e-mail program on your computer. Whether you've actually set it up or not, this is usually configured by default to be either Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express. However, most people nowadays use browser-based e-mail like Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, or others, so the e-mail links don't work. I did a little research this evening and found that you can change how your browser handles those e-mail links by poking around in Tools>Options (Firefox) or Tools>Internet Options (Internet Explorer).

The catch is that only certain types of web mail are supported, and worse yet, the options you get vary from computer to computer. For example, on my Windows XP machine, Firefox can be configured for Gmail or Yahoo mail. But Hotmail is the only web-baed option for Internet Explorer. There are ways to add functionality for other types of web mail, but it seems to be a little hit-or-miss. Rather than try to document how to do all this myself, I found a decent article online that gives more information about it and suggests a few tricks you can try to get it working on your machine.

If you can't get any of that to work or the brand of web-based e-mail you use is simply not supported, the best you can do is to right-click on the "e-mail" link on a member page and select "Copy email address" (Firefox) or "Copy shortcut" (Internet Explorer), then log into your web-based mail site, create a new message, and paste in the address. Firefox seems to be a little better about understanding that it's an e-mail address you're copying; it gets rid of the "mailto" garbage at the beginning of the address. Another option would be to use the built-in method of e-mailing a member from the forum.

Happy surfing...
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