Question

I’ve tried to send email in a Windows Store App by using following code:

    var mailto = new Uri("mailto:?to=[e-mail]&subject=The subject of an email&body=Hello from a Windows 8 Metro app.");
await Windows.System.Launcher.LaunchUriAsync(mailto);

It was not showing any Errors but I didn’t receive any emails. What was wrong from above code?

Answer 1

Your code should open the default mail client (i.e. the default application for handling mailto: protocol) with all the information in the link. If it doesn’t, you probably don’t have the default application set up correctly. This happened to me at first, before I select the Mail application to handle this protocol.

Still, you probably don’t want such an experience for your user for at least two reasons:

• Your code depends on how the user machine is configured. You can’t be sure what will happen when it gets executed.
• Even if Mail is the default app, your code will only create a new draft and the user will have to send it himself.

Depending on what you want to achieve, I’d consider one of the following approaches:

• As Azzy already suggested, for sending emails interactively, sharing is the right approach in Windows Store apps.
• If you want emails to be sent non-interactively, you should create a web service and send email from there when you app calls it.