Dear Computer Lady,
I am 61 and not computer savvy and have no one to help me.
When I am on a website or email & want to send something I get this message ” There is no email program associated to perform the requested action. Please install an email program or, if one is already installed,create an association in the Default Progrms control panel.”
I don’t have a clue what it means. Hopefully, you can tell me.
Thank you. Peggy
Dear Peggy,
What this message means is that you don’t have an email program set up on your computer. An email program is a program that you use exclusively to send and receive email messages. Some examples are Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Windows Live Mail.
Since you sent me your question using a yahoo email, you are probably not using one of the email programs above, but instead using the web interface for yahoo, which is not the same as an email program. Some common web based email programs are, hotmail, yahoo, outlook.com, and gmail.
Since you are using a web browser and not an email program, your computer cannot automatically send an email message when you click on a link to send a message.
Elizabeth
It’s Your Turn: What do you think?
…. Share your experience in the comments box below.
Join The Family
become a patron today
www.patreon.com/computerlady
Elizabeth Boston is a Web designer, Social Media Consultant and managing editor of, “Ask The Computer Lady”.
Connect with Elizabeth on Google+
Hi Peggy,
There is actually a way to do this by installing a small “mail-to” extension
in your browser.
Google Chrome has a setting to do this for Gmail , bur since I don’t know
your operating system nor default browser I can’t completely describe the steps
for your situation.
But I can describe what I use. Browser is Google Chrome, but not set nor configured
to use mail-to links for Gmail.
Instead I use a Chrome extension from the Google Webstore
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mailto/gppbppehiogfokmpligejhaepeopajdf
Install it in Chrome and if you use Yahoo for email , choose Yahoo for the “mail-to” in the setup panel.
5 min before I wrote this, I tried it again and any mail-to link in Chrome or Gmail will open in my default Yahoo mail account – Compose panel.
Don’t know if there is an extension or setting for Internet Explorer.