Google-docs – mailto: link with multiple recipients in a Google Docs Document

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I'd like to create a hyperlink in my Google Document that will pop up the "new email" dialog of Outlook and populate the TO: line with multiple recipients.

If this were a regular HTML page or a desktop Word document, I could just use either of these URLs in the hyperlink: 

mailto:Joe;Frank;Bill
mailto:Joe@mycompany.com;Frank@mycompany.com;Bill@mycompany.com

Outlook, when launched, will correctly resolve these names using the Address Book in outlook. The semicolons are important– Outlook seems to require semicolons to delimit addresses.

But in a Google Document, when I try to create a link with the former syntax, Google won't even let me save the link. When I try the latter syntax, it will consider it an invalid link and won't open Outlook.

Any idea how I can get a hyperlink with either of these URLs in my Google Doc?

I realize that the semicolon delimiter may be outlook-specific, and that's OK since this is an internal page used only inside my company.

Best Answer

I'm afraid that this isn't possible. (At least, not right now.)

A quick perusal of the Google Drive support forums shows other people also wanting to have more dynamic mailto: links in their Google Documents. (Surprisingly, this might be easier to do with Google Spreadsheets and the =hyperlink() function.)

Anyway, I did some experimentation.

A mailto: link with one Email address will work.

mailto:bigal@example.com

However, it has to be an email address. Using a name (so that Outlook will search for it in your address book) doesn't work.

I also tried a couple of other tricks to get multiple addresses in the link.

mailto:bigal@example.com?cc=littlejohn@example.com

That doesn't work. Nor did separating email addresses with commas instead of semi-colons, so that's not an issue.

So, it appears that in a Google Document you're limited to the very simplest mailto: link.

Assuming you're "locked in" to the Google eco-system, your options at this point are to either put email addresses into the document as plain text (so people can copy-paste directly to their email client compose window) or create an email alias for each group of people who should receive email messages from a document. (That last is certainly impractical for even small shops.)

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