Now personally I haven’t had any need for this since I don’t use Gmail but given that a lot of people do this tip might come in handy for those of you using Windows 7.

The tip come from Billy and was originally posted in the WinExtra Community Forums and reposted here:

I wanted Windows to open a Gmail browser window/tab when I clicked on an email link or such. I googled for quite a while, discovered that MS MVP’s were telling people this cannot be done.”..you CANNOT force Win 7 to use Gmail as your default email program because it isn’t a program..it’s a website.” They’re telling people to install Windows Live Mail, or Outlook, and get Gmail through that.

Bullsh*t.

A bit of registry editing:

1. in the start menu search bar type regedit and hit enter.

2. navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\mailto\shell\open\command\” using the folder structure on the left.

3. right click on the name field (should say “default”) and click “modify”.

4. copy the text in there and save as a temporary backup should anything go wrong.

5. paste “C:\Users\*username*\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\
Application\chrome.exe”https://mail.google.com/mail?extsrc=mailto&url=%1” in the box (with quotes on both sides).

6. edit *username* to be your username on your computer this name can be viewed at “C:\Users\”.

7. click “ok” and close regedit.

NOTE: this is set up to open in the Chrome browser if you use another browser the “Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” will have to be replaced with the other browsers file path.

Just thought I’d share

Thanks Bill.

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