MS Outlook Message Reply Formating

MS Outlook, all on its own, decided to change how it formats messages I’m replying to.

I prefer the variant where the original message…

> Is indented with a “>” character
> like this

Rather than the variant where the original message

| Is auto-formatted with a bright blue bar
| at the left, which can’t be adjusted and which
| can’t be quoted and which can’t be removed.

It USED to work the way I wanted, but it stopped, all by its damn self, and I can’t get it to go back again. I went into Options and TOLD it to use “Plain Text” and to quote original messages with the “>” prefix. But it effing well won’t.

I’m so mad I could just – um – wait, this isn’t the Pit. So…

Is there a product I can switch to? A nice email reader, with decent archiving, perhaps with a nice calendar/scheduler, much like Outlook…but which a human being can actually use without his blood pressure shooting up like Popeye’s muskles after a can of spinnitch?

I don’t want to be one of those people who hate Microsoft, but, goddamit, they are not making this easy for me!