2011-03-29-Office 2010 Suite for Blind Users
Seminars@Hadley
Office 2010 Suite for Blind Users
Presented by
Brian Charlson
Heather Campbell
Moderator:
Billy Brookshire
March 29, 2011
Heather Campbell
Hello everyone, so today the things we’d like to talk about our some notable features in Office 2010 in general. We’ll demonstrate a few things. Brian is going to demonstrate how you might go about customizing the ribbon, which is one of the new things in 2010. WE will have a discussion of things that remain true in both 2007 and 2010. We’ll look briefly at the JAWs 12 virtual ribbon that Brian will demonstrate. And we’ll talk about a few items of interest in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook specifically.
The first thing to mention here in Office 2010 in general is the file tab of the ribbon and the backstage view. In 2007 you had the Office button and that would bring you into the office button menu which sort of tools the place of the file menu in 2003. That office button and office button menu was only here in just version 2007 of Office. Then they got rid of it. The file tab you really don’t hear too much about unless you just press alt to go to the ribbon and then left or right arrow and land on a file tab. As soon as you go in there you end up in what they call the backstage view, which they talk about as everything you can do to a file not in a file. You’re still going to be able to get there with alt F and you have options in there that have to do with saving and printing and those types of things.
Navigating is a little bit different in the Office button menu. While there were lots of different ways you could navigate you could have consistency from the rest of the ribbon into the office button menu in that you could tab through your choices. If it was a split button you could enter to get the default choice; Spacebar to get additional choices, tab through those traditional choices and spacebar on what you want. There wasn’t anything really new; you had to learn to go into the Office button menu.
The backstage view I find to be a little bit trickier. If you’re using JAWS and you have the tutoring message voice on that can be helpful as far as which keys you should press. But unfortunately there are some areas where there is a little inconsistency. When you first get in with alt F you’re probably going to down arrow to the choice that you want and then press “enter” on the choice that you want. For some things like “Open” that’s going to bring up the open dialogue and that’s pretty standard. For other choices it’s not, so if you went into say, recent, which would bring you into an area where you can access recent files or recent locations or use tab. In the case of recent, if you just down arrow after pressing “enter” on recent, you’re only going to go through the recent files and then you have to end up tabbing to the recent locations, the recent folder locations. It changes, what keystroke you use will change depending upon where you are.
Another example if you choose “save” and “send” you do all of that to get to the backstage view and then down arrow to save and send, and press “enter.” And then when you down arrow to say, a choice called “save file type.” When you press “enter” on that you’re thrown into a list of choices but then the list you would have to navigate with all of the arrow keys. If you’re using a screen reader like JAWS that has content sensitive help, which in JAWS would be insert F1. There is for some of those items, some help as to what keys you should press. It lists the access keys that you can press to get right where you want to go and also it indicates that you should use all arrows. Normally when you’re in a list you would think up or down arrow. But it turns out you do need to use left and right and up and down.
There is certainly some trickiness to the backstage view as far as what keys you’re going to press and the consistency is not quite there as it was in 2007.
Presenter
Can you think of a situation where you would choose to use the backstage view? If there some place where it is better than you would get any other way?
Heather Campbell
Generally any keystroke that you can press to do something, like if you know Control P already you’re probably going to opt to do that rather than, you’re going to end up in backstage view. There is no longer the regular print dialogue. But you’re still going to opt to using the keystroke Control O you’re probably going to do, that will take you right into the open dialogue as opposed to going to the backstage view. But for other things, like if you wanted to access your recent documents you have to go to the backstage view to do it. If you want to be able to send a file as an attachment directly from, say you’re in Word, you would need to go to the backstage view and go to “save” and “send.”
Anytime you can use a keystroke and bypass it certainly that may be a better option but—
Presenter
But when those don’t work, when those don’t work; when there isn’t a shortcut key, hot key to do it then you have to do it in this fashion.
Heather Campbell
Mm-hmm and just like in 2007 you still have options for each of the programs like Word options, Excel options, whatever program you’re in. You need to go to the backstage view for that because you no longer have the tools menu with a choice for options in there. One of the things we will find under options if the ability to customize the ribbon. In 2007 you were not able to add to or arrange the commands on the ribbon. You were not able to do anything with the groups on the ribbon or create your own tabs on the ribbon. Now in 2010 you can, you can create; in 2010 you can create your own tabs, groups and commands. You can rename the existing tabs that are there, the existing group names and you can change the order of tabs and groups. You can remove a group. You can hide a tab. And when you’ve made changes you can export and import customized ribbons or your customizations to the ribbon.
I think I would still recommend making a list of the things you’ve changed. I think it’s always a little bit scary if you’ve made changes and you then don’t know what they are, even though they do have an option to export and import. I think I’d still want to have a list of what I made sort of nonstandard for when I switch to a different computer, if that were to happen. Because you get used to things being a certain way and you need it function that way.
Presenter
Is there a way to restore it to the original?
Heather Campbell
Yeah, you could individually go in and remove what you have done if you knew what you did. If you weren’t sure, maybe you were just messing around with it and you weren’t quite sure what you changed, there is a rest button in there that you could choose but then you’re going to reset everything at once back to the standard, what they started with out of the box.
Presenter
But again, understanding that that’s the case, at least you do have a way to start over if you muck things up the first time you went through trying to customize this.
Heather Campbell
Yeah, you don’t need to be afraid that you’re really going to do damage. There is no harm in going in and deciding “I think I might want easier access to this group of commands” or whatever your goal is. We can demonstrate how you might create a tab, create a group and add a command to that group. It is a process that will be a little bit time consuming but I guess the plus side is this is not something you are going to do every day. This is something you are going to do when you first get 2010, if you’ve gone to the ribbon and you feel like you’re spending so much time tabbing and you don’t really have a better way to do it because you just can’t remember the keystroke for the times that you go in and do those things. You might decide you want to customize the ribbon and it’s a personal thing. You have the ability to do it so it will appeal to some people and not to others.
Presenter
Do all users have that application?
Heather Campbell
That’s a good question.
Presenter
I’m going to write it down and we’ll find out the answer. I got that impression, right?
Heather Campbell
Yes, I do not know the answer.
Presenter
That’s worth checking out. Are we at the point of doing a demonstration? Or are we going to move on to some more information first?
Heather Campbell
Yes, we are going to create a custom tab in the ribbon in Excel. We’re going to do a demonstration of that.
Presenter
My voice may seem a little different now because I’m pointing the microphone to the speaker of my laptop computer. I’m doing this on a Dell computer. I’m going to go over to an open copy of Excel and I’m going to unplug my regular—
Billy Brookshire
Brian we lost you completely there for a second and just wanted you to know. Bear with us folks; Brian and Heather are attaching it so that we can hear the demonstration. Hang in with us.
Brian Charlson
I did and alt F to bring up a menu, now I’m pressing down arrow.
Heather Campbell
Until you get to “options.”
Brian Charlson
Pressing “enter” to select it
Heather Campbell
As you’re going down, when you first do alt and you down arrow to options, whatever one you land on you probably noticed it announces the access key. If you’re somebody that can remember them or if it’s some place you go to a lot, obviously any keystrokes you can remember are going to speed up your work; if you can remember them, great. At this point Brian is in the Excel options dialogue and he’s in a list of different categories of things you can change. He is going to down arrow to “customize ribbon.”
Brian Charlson
Pressing “enter.”
Heather Campbell
Once you’re into Excel options it is a true dialogue box and the “okay” button is the default button at that point. We can do alt F and then [team] options will get there more quickly that way. It’s a little slow to respond for some reason.
Brian Charlson
Because we are running multiple applications it’s going to run a little slow.
Heather Campbell
We’re on customizing ribbon and as you choose a category the choices related to that item appear in the dialogue box. The first thing you end up needing to do is create the new tab and the new group where your command is going to go. I would assume you’re going to, in real life, add more than one command. There are going to be things that are really useful to you. It’s just for easier access. We’re going to tab, it’s going to be called “view tab button.” And the spacebar to access your tab. Now the tricky thing is that it adds the new tab to the list of the tabs that are currently, that exist by default. But it leaves your focus on the new tab button so you’re actually going to need to shift tab once to the tree view.
When it says “custom” that’s something you created. Now Brian created a new tab and it also automatically created one new group because you’re going to need a group within that tab to place command in. But we also want to rename, probably, the new tab itself. He would want to up arrow to new tab and it will say “custom.” Again custom meaning he created it. And then there is a rename button, so probably we want to tab to it and figure out what it can access. You can call it whatever you want, Brian. And then this is an additional dialogue so you’re going to tab to “okay."
We know now that the access key for the rename button is Alt N, if we can remember that for the next time around because we still need to rename the new group. We would shift tab until we get back to the tree view. It will be a couple shift tabs. And the down arrow to the new group. I’m going to have you call this “chart stuff” because we’re going to put the command in there that has to do with charts. Now you’ve created a place for your command to go and now you would need to choose what command you wanted to put in there. The thing that has the focus in the tree view at this point is what Brian just renamed, which was the group he created within the tab he created. He created group name “chart stuff” in the Brian tab.
Now we’re going to tab or shift tab, I don’t know actually which one is faster. I think they’re about the same, until we get to choose command from the comma box. Depending on what you choose here you’re going to get different results. In the interest of time I’m going to have us choose “tool tabs” and there’ll be a little bit of funkiness in there with how it reads. But if we choose all then it’s just too many items to arrow through or even the first letter. It only seems to let you do, in the list we’re going to end up in next, it only seems to let you do one first letter. Like if you’re fast you can’t do the first two or the first three letters or whatever. It doesn’t work. It would be a lot of arrowing. So we’ll do with it from this perspective. You’re going to arrow to the tools tabs.
You’re going to tab once, it’s going to say “tree view wide.” Okay, the first time we tabbed in here for some reason it didn’t actually say “Tree view wide” and then the second time it did. We landed on design. Now in real life I’m not sure whether I would really choose to display tool tabs to pick out what we’re after here because it doesn’t actually read the name of the tab that would be in the ribbon, which is a little odd. But again it’s so many items if you display everything it just would have been a lot of arrowing. The confusing part is that there is a choice for design that we’re on and then there is a choice for format. There is going to be another choice for design and we want the second one, the second one is actually under “chart tools” and I’m after the command called “Move chart.” And then right arrow to open it, it’s just like a tree view.