[gui-talk] JAWS and Excel

Sat Aug 13 15:54:19 UTC 2011

Thanks, Steve.

This is all most helpful. As you say, I've discovered some of this by trial
and error but didn't know of the END Key's functions and some others.

Take care.

Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Steve Jacobson
Sent: Saturday, August 13, 2011 7:49 AM
To: Discussion of the Graphical User Interface, GUI Talk Mailing List
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] JAWS and Excel

Mike,

I really like Excel for dealing with tabular data.  While I don't consider
myself an expert, I can share a few things that I learned either by
experimenting or the hard way.

I'm sure you have already figured out that you can move around cell by cell
using the arrow keys and that typing at any point will generally place you
in edit mode within the highlighted cell.  You can also force Edit Mode with
F2.  In addition, you can end edit mode in three ways at least.  Maybe there
are more.  Pressing ESCAPE will cancel edit mode.  Pressing ENTER will
complete the edit and move you a cell down, and what is less obvious is that
pressing TAB will end editing and move one cell to the right.  Some of these
behaviors can be modified within the options diealogs.  

What is less obvious is that the "END" key works as a sort of modifier.  I'm
not sure if it works completely the same in
2010 as in 2003, but pressing END followed by an arrow will more or less
move you to the next blank cell in that direction.  You should check the
help to read about these as I don't remember them all, but I have found the
END followed by other keys to be very helpful, and it was something that was
not obvious to me.  

Another thing that was not obvious to me at first is that Excel lets columns
overflow if there is no data to the right.  You will see this used
intentionally for titles sometimes.  The title will be typed into a column
without changing the with and it flows over the columns to the right as long
as there is no data.

Another keystroke that I didn't know about at first were CONTROL PGUP and
CONTROL PGDN to move between worksheets within a spreadsheet.  

Window-eyes has some neat features to keep track of heading columns and rows
and even totals.  I think JFW has some of the same, and learning how such
features work is worth it on complicated spreadsheets.

Another useful Excel feature is Forms View.  This is within the Data menu in
2003.  It takes columns and basically rotates things so the column header is
on the left and you fill in the data on the right.  Each row is then treated
more or less as a record.  Ive used this occasionally but found it to not be
that much of an advantage once I got familiar with other Excel features, but
sometimes it might be worth looking at.

Especially with Excel 2003, I believe there are still lists of keystrokes on
the Microsoft Enable site.  I do not believe I have copies around any more
but will look.  I am sure that most of the above you may have already
discovered, but this might help to know what sort of information you need.
My employer also uses Excel to manage data a lot, and I feel really lucky in
that they could have picked much more problematic solutions for me.

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson

On Fri, 12 Aug 2011 20:27:18 -0700, Mike Freeman wrote:

>I have Excel 2010 here at home but at work, we're still on Excel 2003. 
>While I'd like to learn to add formulae and learn to do computations 
>using Excel, in truth, that's not what's required here. Mostly, 
>spreadsheets are used to generate tabular data such as keeping track of 
>applications, where they're downloaded from, who's responsible for 
>tracking patches etc. etc. etc. I know how to read spreadsheets and to 
>modify them; I just wanted a bit more systematic knowledge of what I 
>was doing as so far, I've learned by guess and by golly.

>Mike

>-----Original Message-----
>From: gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] 
>On Behalf Of Steve Jacobson
>Sent: Friday, August 12, 2011 6:44 AM
>To: Discussion of the Graphical User Interface, GUI Talk Mailing List
>Subject: Re: [gui-talk] JAWS and Excel

>Mike,

>Which version of Excel and what are you trying to do?  I believe there 
>are still keyboard shortcuts on the Microsoft site that you might find 
>useful although if you are starting out they may seem overwhelming.

>Best regards,

>Steve Jacobson

>On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Mike Freeman <k7uij at panix.com> wrote:

>>> Anyone know of a cheatsheet for creating and working with Excel 
>>> spreadsheets using JAWS? TIA!
>>>
>>> Mike Freeman
>>> sent from my iPhone
>>>
>>>
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