Pre-mail

If you’re always sending email to the same people, you can create shortcuts on your desktop to launch your email program with pre-addressed messages to those correspondents.

Right-click on a clear area of the Desktop, select New and Shortcut from the context menus. In the Command Line of the Create shortcut dialogue box, type mailto: and the email address without spaces, as in mailto:editors@we-compute.com. Click on Next, give your shortcut a name, like Angry letter , and click on Finish.

You can also set up the shortcut to send the same message to several people. After you’ve addressed the shortcut, add ?cc= and your other recipients, separated by a semicolon, all without any spaces. For example, in the Command Line you could enter mailto:editors@we-compute.com? cc=publisher@we-compute;circulationmanager@we-compute.com and so on.

Or use the blind carbon copy feature by using bcc instead of cc.

Or if you want to include the same subject line in each message, use subject as in mailto:editors@we-compute.com?subject=Your magazine stinks. (You can use spaces in the subject.)

Or, finally, you can combine any of the above with the use of an ampersand (&). Example: mailto:editors @we-compute.com?subject=Your magazine stinks&cc=pubisher@we-compute;circulationmanager@we-compute.com. The only spaces are in the subject phrase.

Free *Cheap Trick* of the Week: October 11, 1999