Bob
It should have been this easy! I had tried this and although the box was
unchecked, the task pane kept appearing. After much diggin about, I
discovered that there was a "known" problem in this area, and a registry hack
is needed to prevent Office 2003 applications from ignoring the
Tools/Options/View setting. Deleting a certain registry key enables the
setting to be obeyed. The answer was in a knowledge base article.
Thanks
Will