Start Outlook Express from an IE Window

While surfing, you might come across information that makes you want to fire off an email.

It's easy to do with the email button, which is found in IE's standard toolbar. Choose the email button, and then click New Message. A new email window opens, and you can compose the message without opening Outlook Express.

But this won't work unless you've configured a default email editor. First you have to make sure that Outlook Express is your default email editor (or at least that an email program is selected.) To do so:

1.	In Internet Explorer, choose Tools | Internet Options…
2.	From the Internet Options dialog box, make sure your favorite email program is selected in the drop-down menu. As you can see in Figure 12-13, it's possible that this entry is blank. Figure 12-13. Make sure an email client has been selected.

Once this has been set, you'll be able to use the Mail button in Internet Explorer without incident.

It's possible, though unlikely, that you don't see the Outlook Express option, even though you've got it installed. If that's the case, there's a value missing in this registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Clients\Mail\Outlook Express

To fix the problem, you can take the following countermeasure:

1.	Click Start | Run and type MSIMN.EXE /REG and then click OK.
2.	Now, type regsvr32 %ProgramFiles%\Outlook Express\msoe.dll in the Run entry box again and click OK.

These two registration commands should restore the proper entries in the Registry and thus restore Outlook Express in the list of potential email clients in Internet Explorer.