How do I popup the compose / create mail dialog using the user's default email client?

Question

The use case is simple. At a certain point of time, I need to be able to show the user his familiar compose email dialog (Outlook or other) with

• fields like f

Answer 1

you can use a trick if you intend to use Outlook[this code is based on outlook 2010[v14.0.0.]] Create Outlook MailItem and transmit file (ie download) if user opens the file (.msg) the compose message dialog opens automatically

here is the code ...

    Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.Application outapp = new Application();
    try
    {

        _NameSpace np = outapp.GetNamespace("MAPI");
        MailItem oMsg = (MailItem)outapp.CreateItem(OlItemType.olMailItem);
        oMsg.To = "a@b.com";
        oMsg.Subject = "Subject";

       //add detail

        oMsg.SaveAs("C:\\Doc.msg", OlSaveAsType.olMSGUnicode);//your path
        oMsg.Close(OlInspectorClose.olSave);
    }
    catch (System.Exception e)
    {
        status = false;
    }
    finally
    {
        outapp.Quit();
    }

then transmit the file you created say "Doc.msg"

    string filename ="Doc.msg";//file name created previously
    path = "C:\\" + filename; //full path ; 
    Response.ContentType="application/outlook";
    Response.AppendHeader("Content-Disposition", "filename=\"" + filename + "\"");
    FileInfo fl = new FileInfo(path);
    Response.AddHeader("Content-Length", fl.Length.ToString());
    Response.TransmitFile(path,0,fl.Length);
    Response.End();