Can I hyperlink text to open an email in Apple Mail?

Question

Hi,
Are there the equivalent of URLs for mail in apple mail?  I'd like to click on a link in say a Word document, that would immediately open up a related email, but I can't find out how to get the URL (or whatever it might be called) for an email when I'm in Apple Mail.
I'm thinking this must be possible because in Spotlight results you can click on an email and it will open up.
I hope this is clear.  Anybody know how to get this done?

Answer 1

Found this answer on another forum
Since 10.5 Mac OS has the ability to create links to email messages in the Mac Mail client.
The link looks like this:
message://<message id>
There are a few ways to create these links
1) Easiest way: Drag and Drop an email message from Mac Mail into TextEdit.
   This creates an "message:" link.
   When you click on it, that particular email message opens up in Mac Mail
   Some other apps, such as iCal, also accept emails dropped onto them via drag-and-drop
2) Create link manually:
    First, find the Message-ID:
   - View the message as either raw source (Command-Option-U), or with long headers (Shift-Command-H). Find the line that looks something like this:
    Message-Id: <6a73er$[email protected]>
   - You can link to this message from other applications with a URL of this form:
     message://<6a73er$[email protected]>
     To test this, try pasting your link into Safari; it should open message in Mail.
     Note that browsers other than Safari may not behave the same way
Which apps support the message:// link?
  - TextEdit
  - iCal
  - maybe more
Which apps do not support it?
I could not get these links to work in Pages or MS Word
This article provides more information about the new "message:" url scheme:
   http://daringfireball.net/2007/12/message_urls_leopard_mail
Sharing it here in case someone else would like to do this (although it seems I'm the only one).
Final analysis is that these links can be made but they only work in iCal and Text Edit.  If they won't work (easily) in the programs that I use e.g. Word and Excel etc. then it doesn't work.   Pity.