Thanks to KK for this info, it confirms there is a bug. I've been
very annoyed by this. Me: OL2002 with _all_ the patches, on XP Pro.
Hopefully somebody at Microsoft monitors these posts. Below is some
info that'll help track the bug in code.
Summary
-------
The spell checker checks the original message despite what you tell it
to do in the options dialog. The bug surfaces regardless of what, if
any, prefix character(s) you use. It has to do with whether the
prefix option itself is selected. From a developer's perspective, not
looking at code, I'd suggest that a boolean flag is not being set
properly when the prefix option is turned on and you're replying to a
message using plain text.
Details
-------
The bug only surfaces when replying in plain text (not RTF/HTML). I
use RTF (the HTML formatting is annoyingly "helpful") when I send new
messages. I default to the sender's formatting when I reply. If I
reply to someone who uses HTML or RTF and get the solid
graphic-looking vertical line that Outlook inserts by default, the
"Ignore original message text..." option works. But if I reply to
someone who is using plain text, it always appears to ignore my
setting and check the spelling anyway.
To reproduce this bug:
---------------------
Note: I think the setting below is the default setting.
Go to Menu: Tools/Options, Preferences Tab, and Click the "Email
options" button. Under "On replies and forwards", select "Prefix each
line of the original message" on both drop-down boxes, and put the
"greater than" symbol, the > character, in the "Prefix each line
with:" edit box.
Then, just reply to a message that contains a spelling error using
plain text.
Work-around:
-----------
As KK found, within the options dialog box described above, change
"Prefix each line of the original message" on both drop-down boxes to
EITHER:
"Include original message text"
or
"Include and indent original message text"
Additional notes:
----------------
I'd like the original message to stand out in some way so if I reply
in-line to someone, we can distinguish my comments from hers. This is
an old feature I think we have all come to expect. However, the
"indent" option does nothing, at least in plain text mode. I consider
this a bug as well.
I tried changing the prefix character(s) to 3 spaces, to force
indentation of the text, but when I tested the result I found it still
checks the spelling of the original message. I then tried just
leaving the "Prefix each line of the original message" selected, but
deleted everything in the "Prefix each line with" edit box, then ran
my test again.
Key: Even though the message looked identical to the one I got under
"Work-around" above, Outlook still checked the spelling in the
message. This is how I came to the conclusion listed in the summary
above.
Mike Welch
Software Developer
