To one and all, I can NOT believe what I went through with IE and OE the last several days with regard to mailto links - this happened in both an OE email I got as well as at several web sites I was using IE at.
And to make matters worse, when I tried to get help from AT&T's support people, no one at level 1 seems to have ANY information on solving email problems it seems - I have to talk to a level 2 support person. And the way things went, was wondering if I ever was going to solve this problem. The whole thing started this weekend, when I got a statement from AT&T with regard to my cable internet service - unfortunately, the bill did not show anything with regard to WHAT credit card was being used, or what was going on with date info or anything else. HOWEVER, it did have a high lighted area, about contacting customer service - when I clicked on it, I get this message box telling me that no mail program has been setup to send mail from a internet link. WHAT IN THE WORLD???? This was totally weird to say the least since I know I had setup OE to send and receive mail. And when I went to a web site today, which also had a mailto link, I got the same stupid message box. And if I went to internet options, and click on programs, it plainly shows to use OE for both email as well as newsgroups, when dealing with IE. Since I normally use Netscape's products, and have never had a problem with anything like this before, this was unbelievable frustrating for me, since NOTHING seemed to make ANY sense why this mailto link issue was giving the problem it was. Well, after ending up talking to around 7 level 1 support people (a number of them had the gall of actually hanging up on me in the middle of my trying to explain what the problem was) and several level 2 support people (had 1 or 2 at this level also hang up on me - unreal), I finally got a least one level 2 support person that really wanted to help in solving this problem for me. He told me he was going to have to get a computer setup to be at the same point as I was, and was going to put me on hold, so he would be back - he was at least VERY nice. Well, while he had me on hold, I went into OE itself, and looked at an area I normally never look at, ever since I originally set the program up some time ago - the options selection. At the bottom of the general tab under options is something I had never noticed before - it has 2 items at the very bottom, one for email and the other for newsgroups. Unless you click on one or the other or both, OE will NOT be the default for either item. BUT unless you do, no matter what you declare to use with regard to internet options, IF you click on a mailto link in an email or a web site, OE will NOT come up and all you will get is this stupid message box that no mail program has been setup to send mail for internet links. When I did click on them, and click apply, mailto links now properly work as they should in OE as well as IE. When the level 2 tech came back on the phone, I told him what I had discovered, and the call ended up at least on a high note, that at least all had gone well. BUT, after all this, I can NOT believe this would have had to be done at all, to begin with. Since I had told internet options to use OE for email, WHY in the world did I have to set OE as the default email program to get things to work properly???? Another mystery of Microsoft I guess I will never understand, along with MANY others I have run into over the years. Anyway, just a bit of info for those of you who might end up running into this weird problem like I did. Ralph ============= PCWorks Mailing List ================= Don't see your post? Check our posting guidelines & make sure you've followed proper posting procedures, http://pcworkers.com/rules.htm Contact list owner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Unsubscribing and other changes: http://pcworkers.com =====================================================
