Two email editing problems

[Tim]

I have two persistent and irritating problems with editing emails in Outlook,
I'd be grateful for any pointers on how to deal with them:

1) When replying to a message from a recipient flagged to receive HTML
formatting, I include the message to which I am replying. This is indicated
by a vertical blue line at the left edge of the page. I would like to insert
comments amongst the text of this message in the style of a quoted
(blue-lined) block of text followed by my unquoted response. However, if I
type in amongst the quoted text, the blue vertical line also appears
alongside my text, making it impossible to clearly see the difference between
what my correspondent wrote and what I wrote. Text-only emails do not have
this problem with the ">" signs being properly editable. I do not know how
to switch from one to the other.

2) Occasionally, while writing an email, when I get to the bottom of the
window while typing, the window will move to some other portion of the
message while leaving the insertion point where it is. I can keep typing as
usual, but I can no longer see what I am typing unless I manually move the
window back. This is very annoying and obviously a bug. Is there a fix?

Thank you for any help, I do often find these forums most useful.

Cheers,

Tim

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

1) When replying to a message from a recipient flagged to receive HTML
formatting, I include the message to which I am replying. This is
indicated
by a vertical blue line at the left edge of the page. I would like to
insert
comments amongst the text of this message in the style of a quoted
(blue-lined) block of text followed by my unquoted response. However, if
I
type in amongst the quoted text, the blue vertical line also appears
alongside my text, making it impossible to clearly see the difference
between
what my correspondent wrote and what I wrote. Text-only emails do not
have
this problem with the ">" signs being properly editable. I do not know
how
to switch from one to the other.

Change the message format prior to responding. Open the message and click
Edit>Edit Message, then click Format>Plain Text. FInally click Reply. You
will not be able to retain HTML formatting if you want to reid yourself of
the blue line.

2) Occasionally, while writing an email, when I get to the bottom of the
window while typing, the window will move to some other portion of the
message while leaving the insertion point where it is. I can keep typing
as
usual, but I can no longer see what I am typing unless I manually move the
window back. This is very annoying and obviously a bug. Is there a fix?

I don't have a solution for this. I've seen posts stating that it happens,
but I've never seen it myself.

 

[Tim]

Hi Brian,

Change the message format prior to responding. Open the message and click
Edit>Edit Message, then click Format>Plain Text. FInally click Reply. You
will not be able to retain HTML formatting if you want to reid yourself of
the blue line.

I'm running Outlook 2007 (no "Edit" menu). If I "reply" to a message, I can
click the "options" tab and format as plain text (somewhat unintuitively,
this choice is not found under the "format text" tab). However, that just
removes all formatting and does not show any indication of quoted text.
Basically, I am trying to get something like the ">"s exactly as found in
this exchange.

I don't have a solution for this. I've seen posts stating that it happens,
but I've never seen it myself.

The best (?) way to make it happen is to write a long email then go up into
the text and insert a new paragraph. It usually happens when you hit the
bottom of the window. Kerplunk! You're somewhere else in the message and
unless you're a perfect touch-typist, probably inserting rubbish.

Cheers,

Tim

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

The best (?) way to make it happen is to write a long email then go up
into
the text and insert a new paragraph. It usually happens when you hit the
bottom of the window. Kerplunk! You're somewhere else in the message and
unless you're a perfect touch-typist, probably inserting rubbish.

Doesn't happen for me. I jump into the middle of the long message, start
typing and when I it the bottom of the window, the stuff above the
insertion point scrolls upward so I can always see what I'm typing.