TechRepublic passport owner Ren�e Atkinson submitted the topic for this week’s pop quiz. (Ren�e is a technical trainer based in Texas.) If you know how to solve her problem, please submit your solution no later than Friday, Jan. 21, 2000.

We’ve been awarding TechRepublic T-shirts to the folks who correctly answer our pop quiz challenges. (They’re high-quality, embroidered T-shirts.) However, we’re going to try something a little different this week: We’re going to award a $25 gift certificate to Fatbrain.com , one of TechRepublic’s e-commerce partners. If more than one person submits the correct solution, we’ll put those names in a hat and select the winner at random.

The situation:
Here’s the situation Ren�e described: “I send out PowerPoint presentations advertising upcoming classes we offer. In order to make registration easy, I have a hyperlink to “mailto:” and the person they need to e-mail in order to register for the class. When the customer clicks on this hyperlink, not one, but two “send to” e-mail documents open up. The customer always has to click the close box to get rid of the extra one message. And sometimes it will leave the enveloped “untitled message” button on the customer’s taskbar. Does anyone know how to stop this?! So many of our users are novices that this really confuses them. By the way, we are using Office 97 and WinNT 4.0.”

The challenge:
Can you explain why clicking the mailto link generates two e-mail messages, and do you know how to fix this behavior? If so, please submit your solution no later than Friday, Jan. 21, 2000.
By submitting your answer, you agree to let TechRepublic publish your solution on its Web site. You also agree that TechRepublic may adapt and edit and authorize the adaptation and editing of each submission as it deems desirable. TechRepublic may or may not publish a submission at its sole discretion.