Hello. This is Gerry Chevalier from the GTT Edmonton Chapter. This weekly blog provides tips that I find useful as a keyboard user of Windows. The information is for Windows10 and Office 365, although many tips still apply to older versions. The tips do not require a screen reader unless specifically noted. Thus, the tips apply whether you are a keyboard user or low vision mouse user. Here is this week’s tip.
Outlook – Creating a Meeting Request
Outlook provides a special type of appointment called a meeting request. It allows you to send a meeting request to several people at the same time and each of them can accept your meeting request which will automatically create an appointment in their Outlook calendar. You will also be informed with an email from each person who accepts your meeting request. Follow these steps to use the keyboard to create a meeting request.
• From any Outlook view, press Control+Shift+Q to start a new meeting request. The meeting request window will open where you can enter your meeting details.
• Type the title of your meeting and press TAB. You will be placed in the “Required” field.
• Type the email addresses of the people you need to attend the meeting. Outlook will auto complete email addresses just as when you are filling in the “To” field of an email. Press TAB after entering all the required emails and you will be placed in the Optional field.
• Type the email addresses of the people who can optionally attend your meeting or just press TAB to leave this field blank.
• TAB through and enter the date and times your meeting will begin and end.
• There is a field to find a meeting room which you can ignore.
• Don’t forget to fill in the Location field because everyone needs to know where to meet, or which teleconference number to dial, or, if it is an online Zoom meeting, you could paste the link to the Zoom meeting room here.
• Then press Alt+S to save the meeting time in your Outlook calendar as well as send it to the Outlook outbox for emailing the request to your recipients.
• Each recipient will receive an email with your Meeting Request. To accept/decline your request they can press the Applications key on the request email in their inbox. A context menu will open allowing them to choose to accept or decline.
• As each person accepts or declines your meeting, you will receive an email notification in your own inbox. These emails are just for information and can be deleted.

Hello. This is Gerry Chevalier from the GTT Edmonton Chapter. This weekly blog provides tips that I find useful as a keyboard user of Windows. The information is for Windows10 and Office 365, although many tips still apply to older versions. The tips do not require a screen reader unless specifically noted. Thus, the tips apply whether you are a keyboard user or low vision mouse user. Here is this week’s tip.
Outlook – Protected Documents on Email Attachments
By default, Windows will protect Office documents that originate from the Internet such as downloaded documents or documents attached to emails. You have probably received an email with an attached Word or Excel document. After saving the attached document and opening it, you notice it has opened in protected view. With a screen reader, you can verify the protected view by reading the screen title line when the document is open. Windows automatically protects documents that originate from the Internet to inhibit malware macros that could be present in the document. However, protecting the document prevents you from editing it, and it may also cause some accessibility issues with screen readers even if you just want to read the document.
If you trust the sender of the document, you can easily turn off the document’s protection.
• With the document open, press Alt+F. This will bring up the list of categories in the document Backstage view. Sometimes, my screen reader tells me the protected document is not open and it is unresponsive to my keyboard. If I Alt+TAB away from the document and Alt+Tab back to it then it unlocks, and I can press Alt+F.
• Arrow down to the Info category of the Backstage view which gives access to the document properties.
• TAB repeatedly through the document properties of the Info category until you reach the “Enable editing” button and press the space bar. This turns off the document’s protected mode so you can edit it.
• Note: If you Tab beyond the Enable Editing button you will find a link to take you to the Trust Centre where you can modify the global protection settings. For example, you could prevent future documents received from the Internet from being automatically protected. However, for safety, I recommend leaving the global protection settings unchanged because it’s safer to have Internet documents protected by default.

Hello. This is Gerry Chevalier from the GTT Edmonton Chapter. This weekly blog provides tips that I find useful as a keyboard user of Windows. The information is for Windows10 and Office 365, although many tips still apply to older versions. The tips do not require a screen reader unless specifically noted. Thus, the tips apply whether you are a keyboard user or low vision mouse user. Here is this week’s tip.
Outlook – How to Save an Attached Document
If you receive an email with one or more attached documents and wish to save the documents, follow these steps:
• From the email message, press Shift+Tab to focus in the email attachments list.
• If there is more than one attachment, arrow left or right to select the document you wish to save. If you wish to save all the attachments press Control+A to select them all.
• Press Control+C to copy the selected attachment(s) to the clipboard.
• Use File Explorer to open the folder where you wish to save the attachment(s).
• Press Control+V to paste the attachment(s) to this folder.
Here’s a second way to save attached documents without using File Explorer.
• From the email message press Shift+Tab to focus in the email attachments list.
• If there is more than one attachment, arrow left or right to select the document you wish to save.
• Press the Applications key or Shift+F10 to open a context menu.
• Arrow down the menu and press Enter on the Save As menu item.
• This opens the Windows Save As dialogue so you can save the attachment.
Note that one of the items in the context menu is to save all attachments so it is not necessary to repeat the above steps for each attachment. If you use the Save All Attachments menu option, you will be placed in a dialogue to confirm and then a second dialogue to select the folder you wish to save all the attachments to.

Hello. This is Gerry Chevalier from the GTT Edmonton Chapter. This weekly blog provides tips that I find useful as a keyboard user of Windows. The information is for Windows10 and Office 365, although many tips still apply to older versions. The tips do not require a screen reader unless specifically noted. Thus, the tips apply whether you are a keyboard user or low vision mouse user. Here is this week’s tip.
Outlook – How to Attach a Document to an Email
It’s easy to attach a file to an email without using a mouse. Highlight the file you wish to attach using File Explorer. Press Control+C to copy it to the clipboard. Then open your new email window and press Control+V to attach the file to the email. Note that this copy/paste method will not always work if you are using Outlook with an Exchange server which is common in business environments.

Hello. This is Gerry Chevalier from the GTT Edmonton Chapter. This weekly blog provides tips that I find useful as a keyboard user of Windows. The information is for Windows10 and Office 365, although many tips still apply to older versions. The tips do not require a screen reader unless specifically noted. Thus, the tips apply whether you are a keyboard user or low vision mouse user. Here is this week’s tip.
Outlook – How to Enable the BCC Field
Microsoft Outlook does not provide the BCC field by default. If you want to use the BCC field, you need to enable it as follows:
• Open a new message window.
• Press Alt+P to open the Options menu of the ribbon.
• Tab multiple times to reach the “Show Fields” item and press spacebar to enable the BCC button.
• Press Escape to exit the ribbon and return to your message.
Note that this need only be done once. Outlook will now offer the BCC field on all new messages.

Hello. This is Gerry Chevalier from the GTT Edmonton Chapter. This weekly blog provides tips that I find useful as a keyboard user of Windows. The information is for Windows10 and Office 365, although many tips still apply to older versions. The tips do not require a screen reader unless specifically noted. Thus, the tips apply whether you are a keyboard user or low vision mouse user. Here is this week’s tip.
Outlook – Distribution Emails and the BCC Field
What is the purpose of the BCC field in Outlook emails? BCC stands for blind carbon copy. The recipients you put in the BCC field will receive your email, but they will not see the names of the other BCC recipients. If any recipient uses the Reply All feature their email will only be sent to people listed in the To and CC fields. None of the BCC recipients will receive the reply.
Using the BCC field is a handy way to send an email to a group of people without the members of the group seeing each other’s email address. You may wish to put a copy of your own email address in the “To” field, so you receive a copy of the group email. Maintaining the group members’ privacy is considered good email etiquette.
If you expect to send frequent emails to the same group, then after filling in all their email addresses, press Control+A while in the BCC field to select all the names you typed and then press Control+C to copy those names to the clipboard. Send your email and then open a new Word document and press Control+V to save those addresses for later use. Save the Word document which now functions as your distribution list.
When you next need to send an email to the group, open the Word document, press Control+A to select all the text i.e., all the email addresses, then press Control+C to copy them to the clipboard. Open your new email and focus on the BCC field and then press Control+V to paste all the names to the BCC field.
Note: Outlook supports a more formal way of creating distribution lists using group contacts and the Control+Shift+L shortcut to use the Group Contact as the distribution list for an email. You can learn more by reading this Microsoft support article.
Note also that the BCC field is not enabled by default in Outlook. The next tip will explain how to enable the BCC field.
That’s it for this tip. Until next Wednesday, happy computing.

Hello. This is Gerry Chevalier from the GTT Edmonton Chapter. This weekly blog provides tips that I find useful as a keyboard user of Windows. The information is for Windows10 and Office 365, although many tips still apply to older versions.  The tips do not require a screen reader unless specifically noted. Thus, the tips apply whether you are a keyboard user or low vision mouse user. Here is this week’s tip.

Outlook for Windows – Useful Shortcut Keys

Without using a mouse it’s easy to use and move around in the Windows Outlook program.

• Press F6 to move through the regions of the main Outlook window: the ribbons, the calendar peek, the navigation tool bar, the folder pane, the message list, and status bar. Control+Tab will also move through the regions, but it excludes the ribbons and status line.
• Instead of using F6 to reach the navigation bar you can navigate those items directly. Press Control+1 to select the email view, Control+2 to select Calendar view, Control+3 to select Contacts view, Control+4 for the To-Do list and Control+5 for Notes.
• While in any view, you can press Control+Shift+I to focus on the email inbox and Control+Shift+O to focus on the email outbox.
• While in the email, calendar, or contact view, press Control+N to start a new email, appointment, or contact respectively.
• While in any view, press Control+Shift+A to start a new appointment, Control+Shift+C to start a new contact, Control+Shift+E to create a new folder, Control+Shift+K to start a new task in the To Do list, Control+Shift+L to start a new distribution list, Control+Shift+M to start a new email message, Control+Shift+P to open the font dialogue, or Control+Shift+Q to start a new meeting request.
• While in any email folder just arrow up and down to review the list of messages and press Enter to open a message or press Delete to delete the message. Note that you can hold down Shift while you arrow down the list to select successive messages. With multiple messages selected, the Delete key will delete them all. Control+Delete will also delete the message from either the message list or with the message open.
• With a message open, you can ask Windows to read it aloud for you even if you don’t have screen reading software. Press Alt+H followed by r, then 1.
• From the message list or within a message, press Control+R to reply to the sender of a message.
• Press Control+Shift+R to reply to the sender and all other recipients of the message. Note that any recipients in the BCC field are not visible to you and will not be replied to when you use this Reply All feature.
• Press Control+E or F3 to search within contacts or emails. This is handy to find old emails because you can enter a recipient name, sender, subject, or words from the body of the message to find it. Press Enter after entering the search text and TAB over to the results list.
• Press Control+F to forward the message to another person.
• Press Control+Alt+F to forward the message as an attachment.
• Press the Applications key on any message to open a context menu of things you can do with that message. For example, there are menu items to print the email, find related emails, or open the Junk submenu to block the sender of that email so that any future emails from the sender will automatically go to your junk folder.
• While in the To, CC, or BCC fields Outlook will attempt to auto complete any email address as you begin typing it. If there are multiple auto completion possibilities, you may down arrow to see the list of possible auto completions and press Enter on the one you want, or press Delete if you want Outlook to forget that email and not use it for future auto completions.
• While in the To, CC, or BCC fields, you can press Control+Shift+B to open a dialogue that allows you to search your Outlook contacts for a person and then put that person’s email address into the field.
• You can press Control+Y to bring up a list of your other inbox folders. Arrow down the list to choose a folder and then press Enter to move to that folder.
• You can move the current or all selected messages to another folder using Control+Shift+V. Choose the destination folder from the resulting list of folders and press Enter to move your message to that folder.
• Alt+S is a quick keystroke to finish the message you are typing and save it to the outbox. This same keystroke will save the appointment/meeting request you are typing or a contact you are editing.
• Control+S, on the other hand, will also save the email message you are typing but instead of saving it to the outbox it will be saved to the Drafts folder. This is handy if you don’t want to immediately send your email and you want to save a draft of it to complete later. To later complete the draft email, use the Control+Y keystroke to go to the Drafts folder and there you will find your saved email. Press Enter to open the draft email and continue working on it. Then you can resave it with Control+S or send it to the Outbox with Alt+S.
• F7 will start the spell checker.
• F9: If you have configured Outlook to not automatically download messages and to not automatically send messages that are saved in the outbox, then press F9 when you are ready to download new emails and also send emails that are saved in your outbox.
• F12 will open the Save As dialogue to save a message to a file.

Here is the complete list of Outlook keyboard shortcuts.

Additional shortcuts for users of the JAWS screen reader:

• When an email is open, you can quickly read its header information. Press Alt+1 to read who the email is from, Alt+2 to read the date of the email, Alt+3 to read who the message is being sent to, Alt+4 to read the cc field, Alt+5 to read the Subject field  (press twice quickly to focus on the Subject field), and Alt+6 to read the bcc field.
• From any of those header fields, press Alt+` to jump to the message body.
• Tip: It’s useful just before you press Alt+S to send a new email message to the outbox, to first press Alt+3, Alt+4, Alt+6 to quickly verify who you put in the “To”, CC, and BCC fields. It’s easy with auto completion to accidentally put someone into these fields that you didn’t intend to.
• Since Outlook email uses the MS Word engine, you can use JAWS navigation keys to navigate the message body. For example, you may press H to jump from heading to heading, or JAWS+F6 to bring up a list of headings, or JAWS+F7 to bring up a list of links. This can be useful for reading long messages such as newsletters where the sender may have set headings or included links.

That’s it for this tip. Until next Wednesday, happy computing.