textarea element in an html email in outlook 2000 & 2003

[tgh003]

I am experimenting with some html emails.

I would like to be able to insert a form with a textarea underneath an
article which is sent in an email. IOW:

----------------------
Pretend this is the article text here.
Pretend this is the article text here.
Pretend this is the article text here.

Now we want to insert a form below this such as:
<form method="get" action="http://.....">
<textarea name="comments"></textarea>
<input type="submit" value="Submit Comments">
</form>
-----------------------

All this works fine - however in Outlook 2000 and 2003 i am unable to
insert a space in the textarea. So all my words run together.
Everytime I hit a space it wants to go to the next message. Looks like
the spacebar is the equivalent of the down arrow or something.

It works fine in Outlook Express, and most web mail programs.

Any ideas why Outlook 2000 and 2003 has this strange behavior? Any
work arounds here?

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

The user may need to open the message -- rather than use the form from the preview pane -- or disable the Outlook feature that uses the space bar to browse the current folder (Tools | Options | Other | Reading Pane). As the sender of the message, of course, you can't force them to do either.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers