MAILTO: Link from a VB6 App

Well, hopefully I won’t be working in Visual Basic 6 enough to need to use this again.  But– just in case. 

I was working in an executable application written in Visual Basic 6.  I wanted a particular click to work just like a “MAILTO:” link does in a web browser.  Since I primarily work in web applications I knew exactly how to do it with the simpliest of HTML syntax, but wasn’t sure how to do it through an application. 

Turned out to be super easy– make a ShellExecute call with MAILTO:emailaddress as the filename.  In fact if you go to the Start->Run and type in MAILTO: and the email address, it will do the same thing– start an email to that individual.

Declaring ShellExecute Function

Private Declare Function ShellExecute Lib “shell32.dll” _
    Alias “ShellExecuteA” (ByVal hWnd As Long, _
    ByVal lpOperation As String, ByVal lpFile As String, _
    ByVal lpParameters As String, ByVal lpDirectory As String, _
    ByVal nShowCmd As Long) As Long

Using ShellExecute Function

filename=”email@company.com”
stat = ShellExecute(0, “Open”, filename, vbNullString, vbNullString, 1)

P.S. Just like the MAILTO: link through HTML, you can define other parameters like subject lines and such.  I just needed email yesterday.