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.

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.
Microsoft Office – Searching the Help Database
When you are in any Office app such as Word, Excel, Power Point, or Outlook you can search that app’s Help database.
• Press F1 to open the Help Search pane.
• Type a topic or question into the search box. For example, in Excel, you might type “how to insert rows” without the quotes.
• As you type your search text, matching search results will appear in a list. You can arrow up and down the list to find the topic that you want, and press Enter.
• Then you can press TAB to find links to more specific information on the selected topic,
• Press Enter to activate the link and open the corresponding Help article which can then be read as a web page.
• Press Shift+F6 to go back to your document pane and F6 from there to return to the Help pane.
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.
Microsoft Office – Document Backstage View
The Backstage view is a useful interface to explore and use for keyboard users.
When you launch Microsoft Office apps such as Excel, Word, or Power Point via a desktop icon or from the Start menu you are placed in the Backstage view. The Backstage view replaces the File menu on older versions of Office. You may also reach the Backstage view by pressing Alt+F. Backstage view has a list of categories that allow you to open or save documents, print documents, export documents to other formats such as PDF or HTML, manipulate the current document’s properties, and more. You select the Backstage category from a list of categories using Up/Down arrows. For each category, there are different controls which you can explore with Tab or Shift+Tab.
For example, the Open category allows you to reopen a document from a list of recent documents or, if you press Down arrow on the Recent tab, you will find other sources for documents such as OneDrive, This PC,and a Browse button. The Browse button will launch the usual Open File Dialogue.
The Info category allows you to protect/unprotect a file, add a security password to a file, or add title or author attributes, add search keywords, and more. Note that adding a document title in the Backstage view is especially useful if you plan to save the document in html format for later inclusion as a web page. The document title will then become the web page title when you save the Word document as an HTML document.
Although the Backstage view is completely Accessible, sometimes it just gets in the way. You may just want to open MS Word and start a new blank document. You can exit the backstage view and return to the document window by pressing Escape. For example, to start a new MS Word document simply launch Word, then press Escape to exit the Backstage view and you will be in a blank document Window. Type your document and then press F12 to save it.
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.

Web Browsing – Copying Links
Have you ever wanted to paste a link to a web page into an email or document? While you are on the web page press Alt+D to place focus in the address bar of your web browser. The link of your current web page will be highlighted meaning it is auto selected so you can then just press Control+C to copy the link to the clipboard. Now simply go to the text of your email or document and press Control+V to paste the link. Note: If pasting to an email it’s a good idea to press Enter immediately after pasting the link.

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.

Web Browsing – General Shortcut Keys

When browsing a web site there are several general keyboard shortcuts that work for all browsers.

• Arrow up and down to read line by line.
• Press Control+Up and Control+Down to navigate to the previous or next paragraph.
• Press Control+Home to jump to the top of the web page and Control+End to jump to the bottom.
• Press Tab and Shift+TAB to jump forward or backward from element to element such as between links or form fields.
• Press Enter to expand menus or Alt+Down Arrow to open drop down lists.
• When focused on a link, press Enter or spacebar to open the link which results to jumping somewhere else on the same web page or opening a new web page.
• Press Alt+Left/Right Arrow to move backward /forward among the web pages in your browsing session.
• Press Alt to reach the menu of your browser and then arrow among the menu items.
• Press Control+Enter to open a link in a new browser Tab. Tabs are useful if you need to have multiple pages open at the same time. You move back and forth between open Tabs by pressing Control+Shift+Tab (previous Tab) or Control+Tab (next Tab). For example, suppose you are on the main table of contents for a web based user manual. You want to follow the link to chapter 3 but not close the main table of contents web page. In that case, press Control+Enter instead of Enter on the Chapter 3 link. Chapter 3 will open in a new browser Tab and you will remain in the main web page. To switch to the Chapter 3 Tab, press Control+Tab, and when you want to return to the main page, press Control+Shift+Tab. You may have many TABS open at the same time.
• Press Control+F4 or Control+W to close a browser Tab when you no longer need it.
• Press Alt+D to place focus on the current web page address/search bar. When you do this, the web address will automatically be highlighted so you could then do one of 3 things: 1) press Control+C to copy the address to the clipboard, or 2) type another address followed by Enter to open that new web site, or 3) type a search string followed by Enter to search for a new web site.
• Pres Control+E to perform a web search. This will also place focus on the address bar but, in this case, the current address bar is cleared so you can type a new web search string.
• While on the address bar, you can press Tab or Shift+Tab as well as F6 or Shift+F6 to move forward and backward between different browser controls. The behavior depends on which browser you are using but feel free to try these shortcuts to learn what is available. You will find items such as a history of web pages you visited, or your list of bookmarks and other tool bar items. Of note in the Google Chrome browser is the button to view site information. If you press Shift+TAB on the address bar you will be focused on the View Site Information button which you can press spacebar to activate. It describes the security level of your web page so that you can be confident the information exchanged between you and the web site is done in a secure manner.
• This is a good place to discuss security and safe web browsing. In general, when on the address bar you can tell that a web site is secure if its address begins with https where the ‘s’ denotes a secure site. If you are on a web page whose address begins with only http, then be careful about exchanging information with that site. It is not a secure site and may even be masquerading as a company or organization that it is not.

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.

Windows File Explorer – How to Use the Recycle Bin

Have you ever accidentally deleted a file and wanted to get it back? In File Explorer a deleted file is not actually removed from your computer. Rather, the file is moved to the Recycle Bin, so it is possible to restore the file. To restore a deleted file, follow this procedure.

• Press Windows key + M to go to the desktop.
• Press R multiple times until you reach the Recycle Bin icon and then press Enter to open the Recycle Bin.
• You will be placed in a list of deleted files. Likely, your deleted file is in this list unless it was deleted a very long time ago. Also, when you deleted the file, if you pressed Shift+Delete to bypass the Recycle Bin, then the file will have been removed from your computer.
• You can arrow up and down the list of files to find the file you have deleted. If you know the file name, you may press its first letter multiple times until you reach the desired file. Note that beside each file are details such as the name of the original folder that contained the file and its deletion date. You can read these values with a screen reader by using the right arrow or reading the entire line.
• When you find the file, press the Applications key.
• From the resulting context menu, select the Restore item and press Enter. The file will be restored to its original folder on your computer.
• Press Alt+F4 to close the Recycle Bin.

Sorting the Recycle Bin:

If you have many files in the Recycle Bin, or you cannot remember the name of the file you deleted, it may help to sort the file list as follows.

• If the current file you are focused on is selected, then unselect it by pressing Control+Spacebar .
• Press the Applications key.
• Arrow through the resulting context menu and select the Sort By submenu and press Enter to open it.
• Arrow through the submenu and choose the sort option you want. For example, you can sort the list of files alphabetically by name, by their original location, by the deletion date, or by the date the file was last modified. You can also choose ascending or descending order.

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