Linking to Email and Email Archives

Email is a key feature of the Internet so it's important to incorporate it in to your sites. This tutorial shows you how to create email links and also link to messages in your email archive...

Linking to Email Accounts

Linking to an email account replies on the person viewing the page having a properly configured email client installed. To link to an email account, prefix the email address with "mailto:" as shown below:

[mailto:info@adaptavist.com]
[Email Adaptavist|mailto:info@adaptavist.com]
[Email Adaptavist|mailto:info@adaptavist.com|Click to send email]

Which results in:

info@adaptavist.com
Email Adaptavist
Email Adaptavist

When the person viewing the page clicks the link, their email application will be launched ready to send you an email.

If you are going to specify custom on-screen text but no tooltip, you should make sure the custom text makes sense when prefixed with Send email to, for example:

[Email Support Desk|mailto:support@adaptavist.com]
[Adaptavist Support Desk|mailto:support@adaptavist.com]

When you hover the mouse over the links, you'll see why:

Email Support Desk
Adaptavist Support Desk

Filling out parameters

You can provide parameters such as subject text and body text for the for email by including a ? after the address, and connecting multiple parameters by using &.

To add a subject line add subject=<your_subject_here> like this:

[mail somebody|mailto:somebody@example.com?subject=Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.]

To add a message body add body=<your_body_here> like this:

[mail somebody|mailto:somebody@example.com?body=consectetur adipisicing elit]

And Combining the two like this:

[mail somebody|mailto:somebody@example.com?subject=Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.&body=consectetur adipisicing elit]

You can CC and BCC using cc=somebodyelse@example.com and bcc=another@example.com

Linking to the Mail Archive

You can link to the mail archive within a space using either the link-to macro or the menulink macro.

We'll use the menulink macro (part of the Documentation theme) as an example:

{menulink:mail}Mail Archive{menulink}

Linking to your Mail Messages

Although a little cumbersome, it's possible to create links to emails within your [USERGUIDE:Mail Archive] (if you have one):

1. Enter your mail archive and display the message that you want to link to.
2. In the browsers location bar (where the page URL is shown), you'll notice a number near the end of the address - copy this number to your clipboard
3. To create a link to that mail message from elsewhere in your site, use the following notation...

[$number]

Where number is the number you copied from the URL of the mail message.

By default, the email subject will be used on-screen link text, however you can specify a custom title and URL in the usual manner, for example:

[My Email|$31623|Display my email message]

Hints and Tips

When creating links to an email account, always ask yourself the following quesitons:

• What happens if the recipient is on holiday or leaves our organisation?
• What happens if the email address is discontinued?

In many cases, it's best to create a "Contact Us" page and display the email addresses on there - that way, if an email address needs to be changed, you only need to do it in one place.

If you have a busy site, you should consider creating email groups on your mail server so that more than one person can access the emails.

Frequently Asked Questions

See Also

• Atlassian's Online Documentation
• link-to macro
• menulink macro
• [USERGUIDE:Converting Mail to Wiki Pages]