TechDish: Use Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail as Your Default Mail Program

Posted on: Fri, 10/22/2010 - 08:54 — us104_techdish

Happy Friday to all and welcome to another installment of TechDish! Remember, you can listen to TechDish live, every Friday morning at 7:30am on 104.3 FM, or pick up US104's live web stream! Today we're talking about how to set your default mail client to be your webmail account, be it Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo!.

Here's the scenario. You're browsing a certain website and you need to ask a question. You go to the Contact page to find an email address, but when you click on the email address, what happens? For those of you who use Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail or other local mail client, the program launches and creates a new message, populating the To: field with the email address you clicked. Slick, right?

But what about those of us who don't use a local mail client? What if we are perfectly happy using our webmail client instead?

If we do not take the steps in today's episode, then anytime we click on an email address we are taken into the initial setup run of whatever Windows thinks your default mail client is (usually Windows Mail or Outlook Express). This requires us to cancel out of several dialogues and "are you sure's" to get back to where we started, unless we want to use that mail client; in which case a full configuration is required. The other option is to copy and paste the email address into your webmail in another window/tab, but that also tends to be tedious.

Webmail as default mail client in Windows

Follow the steps below for whichever email platform you use, and you'll forevermore be able to click an email link in a browser and use your preferred email account. Too much for you? Can't get it to work? If you have questions, feel free to give us at call or stop in at IDEaS Computers, we'll be glad to help you.

Hotmail Users

To make your browser and other applications use your Hotmail account as your default mail program:

• In Internet Explorer's File Menu, go to Tools > Internet Options
• In the resulting dialog window, click the Programs tab
• For the Email program, make sure Hotmail is selected

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Gmail Users

To make your browser and other applications use your Gmail account as your default mail program:

• Download the Gmail Notifier
• Right-click the Notifier icon in your system tray and select Options
• Check the box for Use Gmail for internet mailto: links

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Yahoo! Mail Users

To make your browser and other applications use your Yahoo! Mail account as your default mail program:

• Download and install Yahoo! Messenger
• In Internet Explorer's File Menu, go to Tools > Internet Options
• In the resulting dialog window, click the Programs tab
• For the Email program, make sure Yahoo! Mail is selected