[gui-talk] JAWS and Excel

Sun Aug 14 00:51:19 UTC 2011

I helped Judy do the NFB of Maryland treasurer's reports for over 15 years.
In the beginning I was using a shareware DOS spreadsheet called "AsEasyAS
1-2-3".  I had set up transactions in one row for each check or deposit,
with more than 20 columns across, depending on the category to which the
expense or deposit was to be assigned, and other colums where summations
were calculated.  I discovered that when it was time to create a report
showing the category and its activity, which lay in two adjacent columns, I
could define them as a range and then use the /Range Copy Transpose command
to copy this range in the form of a report that I could print to a file.

I was delighted to find that Excel 2003 could correctly read  the AsEasy
spreadsheets (unlike Lotus 1-2-3).  Although /Range Copy Transpose didn't
work, I found that I could select the range, copy it to the Clipboard and
then use Paste Special to paste a transposed version of that range.  And to
define the range, you can use F8, the extended selection key.  With the
ribbon, 2010 is probably more difficult than 2003, but hopefully it can be
mastered.  I know that DeWitt and Associates, among others, provides some
training for JAWS and Excel 2010 "for a small fee."

I think that spreadsheets are an under-appreciated application for blind
people, because we can work on a huge blackboard and yet concentrate on that
data one cell at a time.

Lloyd Rasmussen, Kensington, Maryland
Home:  http://lras.home.sprynet.com
Work:  http://www.loc.gov/nls

> -----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 10:49 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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