You can turn autoquote on, but clicking on "Tools!Enable Autoquote" while you are replying to a message. It won't go into effect until the next time you reply (so you can hit back button on browser and hit reply again--that option should really be under tools while reading a message).
To cause code to maintain its spacing (on a white background), put it inside of < PRE>< /PRE> tags (without the spaces), so:
it
looks
like
this :)
>How do you change the backcolor in these replies through the thread to show what the other person typed from what you reply to them?
>
Steve Gibson