To answer your first question... when you have the Text tool chosen, there's a little icon at the top of the page that opens a Character palette. One of the icons in that window is for underlining text. You have to click on it to turn it on and off. it could be on so you should check that.
To answer your second question, watch this video tutorial
http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/BrandingSM.mov It's easy to follow and this action will work on both portrait and landscape comps.
Hope that helps ya
