You probably find yourself creating email messages to a handful of people more than others. If so, why not create a shortcut that lets you automatically begin a new message, addressed to that person, with just one mouse click? Right-click any empty space on the desktop, and choose New, Shortcut from the menu. In the Command Line box, type mailto: (be sure to include the trailing colon), and then enter the recipient’s email address. The final result should look like this:
mailto:ed@example.com
Mailto: links were originally designed for use on Web pages, but you can also save them as shortcuts on the desktop, the Start menu, or the Quick Launch bar so they’re more readily available. When you double-click the shortcut, your default mail program opens, with your preset parameters already entered.
To enter multiple recipients in the To: field, separate e-mail addresses with a comma. To add optional fields, follow the final recipient’s name with a question mark and enter the name of the first optional field, followed by an equals sign and the value for that field. Preface each subsequent field with an ampersand (&). The following optional fields are allowed:
- cc=name@example.com
- bcc=name@example.com
- subject=text
- body=text
If any value contains a space, you’ll need to enclose the entire command in quotation marks. For instance, here’s how to create a shortcut that begins a daily status report addressed to two people, with the subject and body already filled in:
“mailto:ed@example.com,judy@example.com?subject=Status report&Body=No news today.”
After creating the basic message, you can customize it as needed and click Send.
Ed Bott 
I’ve created an icon for my quick launch bar that starts a new Outlook mail message. The command is: “%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\OUTLOOK.EXE” /c ipm.note” and the icon can be found in %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\1033\OUTLLIBR.DLL. I’ve also created icons for a new contact, appointment, stickynote, and task, simply by replacing the word “note” in the command above.
That’s quite clever, Ryan, thanks. This is a good tip since I email the same two people daily.