Make Windows Mail the default email program (email client) in Windows Vista

Since Windows Mail ships with Windows Vista, it is automatically set as the default email program. But, if you manually install another email client on your computer, or if an email program comes bundled with an Internet suite of some kind, another email program may have been set as the default instead. In this tutorial, we will explain how to change your default email program back to Windows Mail; this is something you can do either from within Windows Mail, or through the windows control panel.

To see how to change your default email program through the control panel, please read this tutorial: change default email client in Windows Vista.

Make Windows Mail the default email client

Follow these steps to set Windows Mail as the default email program on your computer:

• Start by opening Windows Mail
• When it has loaded, click on the tools menu and choose options
• When the options dialog has opened, make sure that the general tab is selected by default (it should automatically be).
• All the way to the bottom of that tab, notice the "Default Messaging Programs" section: if Windows Mail is not currently the default email program, the first "Make Default" button will be enabled; if that button is disabled (grayed out), this means that Windows Mail is already the default email client on your PC.
• Click the "Make Default" button displayed next two "This application is the default Mail handler" - Windows Vista me ask you to confirm this action, as an administrator, after you do, Windows Mail has now become the default email program on your computer.
• This means that, for example, when you see an email a link on a web page, clicking it will automatically open a new email window in Windows Mail. You can test right now to confirm that Windows Mail is indeed the default email client:
• Click this link: test@email.com - if a blank, new email window of the open inside Windows Mail, you now know that Windows Mail has successfully been set as default mail handler.
• If, at a later time, another email program starts opening in these cases, it just means that someone else, or program installer, has changed your default email client. All you need to do, is go back in Windows Mail, to the Options, and manually reset Windows Mail to be your default email program, following the steps we just explained.

And there you go! That's all you need to do to change your default email program for Windows Vista to be Windows Mail.