How can I prevent my webform launching Outlook.

[Ed Duffner]

Hi,

I have cretaed a basic web form with a POST method and mailto action. When I click on submit I get a warning asking if I wanto send the data via mail and if I click 'ok' on this dialogue box, a new Outlook message appears with just the address in it. How can I get my form to bypass Outlook?

The web server is on an NT box.

TIA,
Ed.

[Jamie Hughes]

Hi Ed,

Your mailto: will launch whatever program you have configured as your Default mail program. It sounds like you've got that set to be Outlook?

What do you want it to use when it does a mailto:? Launch that program and when you do, it should ask you if you want to make it the default mail program. Answer yes and then your webform should use that unless you change it back. Most Microsoft programs will ask you that question. If you are trying to use another application for email, search for an option or setting that says something like "use this as the default mail client" or something like that.

I might be able to give you more info if you could describe how you want it to work/what mail program you want to use and a little more background on your webform.

Best regards,
Jamie Hughes

[Ed Duffner]

Hi Jamie,

Thanks for the reply. The form is for my colleauges to send me some of their details so I can do some sys admin work and would only consist of simple string data like name, employee number etc.

What I was hoping would happen is when they press the submit button, the form would just send an email in the background directly to me. I had a similar form on an old apache web server and it worked great. This was on a HP-UX server (probably using mailx as the mailer program).


Thanks again,
Ed.

[Jamie Hughes]

Hello Ed,

Are you using FrontPage (what version?) to create your webpage/form or did you code it in something else? What kind of webserver is hosting this page? UNIX? IIS? Apache?

There are some things you can do to configure the mailto to work in the background, but my info is for the FrontPage server extensions. I didn't want to post it if it doesn't pertain to you. Please let me know what package and version you use to create your form, if you use the Frontpage server extensions, and what kind of web server are you publishing to.

Best regards,
Jamie Hughes

[Jamie Hughes]

Hi Ed,

On the chance that you are using Frontpage Server extensions with IIS (or UNIX), I will go ahead and post a few articles that might help you out. One of these articles is sample code that can be used with or without Frontpage server extensions.

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q196/4/89.ASP

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q279/4/60.ASP

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q196/4/61.ASP

Please let us know if that helps.

Best regards,
Jamie Hughes