Spell checker won't work using a Signature in an Outlook 2..

I am currently using Outlook 2003 for email and have Word 2003 set to edit
emails. Spell checker - set in English (UK) - works fine in Word and also in
emails with Outlook. Until I use a signature! I am trying to create a
signature with 6 blank lines and on the 7th line have my name. When I create
a new email (including the signature) the spell checker will not correct
anything within those 7 lines, but ironically will work on the 8th line! The
default word language settings are set with the ‘Do not check spelling or
grammer’ box unticked, but this is always ticked when I check the language
settings for lines 1-7. I have tried creating the signature using the usual
edit and the advanced edit. In advanced edit the language settings box is
ticked to check spelling. Any help would be appreciated. I tried an IT
specialist who I know who gave up, so it would be nice to tell him that
someone else was able to resolve it.

We have the same issue here. Did you get anywhere with sorting it out? If so, any chance of clueing me in on the secret?

I've tried googling for it, and found several other people with the same problem, but very little in the way of helpful information.

I've had a look through the MSWord-generated HTML code that's used to generate the signatures, and can see things like "<w:SpellingState>Clean</w:SpellingState>" and "<span lang=EN-GB style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;
color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>", but these don't seem to do much useful when changed.

Cheers