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
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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
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
Brian Charlson
I hit right arrow.
Heather Campbell
And then we’re going to down arrow. And the right
arrow to open that and then down arrow to move
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chart. The reason that I was choosing this as an
example is that if you’ve created a chart in Excel
2010, this was true in 2007 as well; by default it puts it
as an object on the sheet. If that’s what you want,
that’s great. If you put it as a chart within its own
sheet and then you change your mind, there is no real
way to get the focus really back on that chart. One of
the ways around that is to add this item to the ribbon.
But this could be any item that you’re adding to the
ribbon. And then we’re going to tab to the add button.
Spacebar to activate.
Then we’re going to double check that we did it right.
So you’re going to tab and then tab again, so there’s
move chart. We’re going to up arrow just to make
sure it’s in “chart stuff” which should also be in
“Brian.” “Brian” is the tab he created. “Chart stuff” is a
group and then move down arrow again. And “Move
Chart” is the command that he added to the “chart
stuff” group. And so if this was the only thing you were
going to change you could tab through to “okay” but
notice as you go through, hopefully the tab order will
show up that there is a move up button and a move
down button. If you wanted to change the order of
really anything, maybe you wanted “Brian” to be the
four or the home tab, whatever. You would just leave
your focus on that particular item and use the move
up button until it was in the right place.
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You would probably have to shift tab back to the tree
view and double check that it’s in the right place in
order to really know that you’ve done it right. I would
always double check before you go to the okay
button. You will notice also that you’ll pass by a reset
button that will allow you to reset any of the
customizations that you’ve made. And then there is
an import and export button as well for importing and
exporting customizations. We’re going to tab to okay.
Brian Charlson
Now if I go Alt to ribbon bar I see a home tab and
there is the “Brian” tab. I’m hitting the tab key to drop
down into that. Here is the group box I created. Here
is the group box I created and it did indicate the move
chart and the one control within that box. That’s
escape to cancel that. Is that the end of the
demonstration?
Heather Campbell
Yes.
Brian Charlson
Okay, so we’re going to move back.
Heather Campbell
Let’s just make sure there are no questions and that
they did hear us. There is a question that says does
Microsoft create hotkeys for your customized ribbon?
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Any hotkey associated with that button would still be
there. If there was a hotkey to do a particular task, like
if you put “bold” into a group you created, you’re still
going to be able to do Control B unless you
reassigned Control B to something else, which you
can also do. You can assign your own keystrokes.
The dialogue should list if there’s a conflict or an
existing keystroke. Once you’ve reassigned it, unless
you reset the keystroke you are kind of stuck with
that, so choose carefully. That’s the only question I
see at the moment.
Something they’ve fixed in 2010 is the ability to move
from one group to another within each tab of the
ribbon. If you don’t know, with any tab of the ribbon
you have a bunch of different items or commands you
can tab through or shift tab through. Those
commands are further divided down into groups.
There was a keystroke in 2007, people tried Control F
to control right arrow. People tried shift control F to
shift control right arrow. It really didn’t work and the
problem was it didn’t work when you were in an edit
field, like if you were in the font edit field. Control F to
control right arrow moves by word, shift control F to
shift control arrow move, would select by word. So
now they’ve fixed it so in 2010 you can do control
right arrow to move to the first command in the next
group. Or control left arrow to move to the previous
group.
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There is a q question that says are you saying you
need to use the tab key to get to groups within a tab?
Yes, unfortunately the word tab is used a lot. In the
ribbon there are your various tabs like “home” tab and
“insert” tab and “page layout” and so instead of the
menu bar that’s what you have. You would press alt
to generally go to the ribbon. Left or right arrow to
switch tabs of the ribbon, or if you knew the access
key like alt H for home tab or alt P for page layout or
whatever, that would get you more quickly there.
Once you’re on the tab of the ribbon you want to use
you’re going to press the tab key to move, first it will
say “lower ribbon” and then it’s supposed to
announce the name of the group and you’ll be on the
first button or command within that group.
You can continue just tabbing through everything
that’s there. If you know enough about what’s in that
tab of the ribbon you might hear things related to
pasting and decide “I want to do something that’s
related to font. So I know I can move to the next
group within that tab of the ribbon. I’m going to do
control right arrow.” It speeds up the process but
again, it’s only really useful if you have a pretty good
understanding about what’s in that tab of the ribbon.
Somebody asked “does Alt B work for the “Brian”
tab?” I’m actually not sure what the access key would
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be by default for a custom tab you created. He’s going
to give that a shot. It’s actually; I think it was Alt Y.
There may be letters that get assigned to custom
made tabs. I’m actually not sure about that. We’ll write
that question down a well and look that up, how it’s
decided and if you can actually change the command
to get in a particular tab of the ribbon.
I’m going to skip over some things since we’re at 3:30
and I wanted to look at some issues with the ribbon
and some other auctions associated with it. General
thoughts on the ribbon are if you have a keystroke to
bypass the ribbon, again for example if you do Control
B for bold, those are still better options than going to
the ribbon just because it’s faster. If you find,
remember that the application key brings up a context
menu so it’s related to what has focused. If you don’t
use it you may find that it contains things that you
want to do in a particular area that you’re in when
you’re working.
Also when you go to the ribbon you may just want to
go there to explore; press Alt to go to the ribbon, left
or right arrow, to the tab of the ribbon you want. And
as you tab through hopefully your screen reader
announces a series of keys you can press to activate
a particular control. If it’s something you do all of the
time or if it’s something you’re going to do as a
repetitive task that day or if it’s actually a logical
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command it might be something that’s worth
remembering. For example, you might do Alt H to go
to the home tab and the PG for the paragraph
dialogue.
The other thing you might continue to do is if you
came from using 2003, you can use some of the 2003
keystrokes in terms of if you used to do Alt T for tools
and then E for letters and mailing and then E for
envelopes and labels you can still do that and it will
get you to the envelopes and labels dialogue. Other
commands like doing Alt F for file and U for page
setup, that no longer works. I don’t know where you
can get a list of all the things that still work versus
things that don’t work anymore but you can continue
to do trial and error if there are certain series of keys
you pressed in 2003 just give it a shot. If it saves you
time then it’s worth it.
I don’t know that I would immediately start
customizing the ribbon for everything under the sun, I
would see is there another way to do it. Is there a
keystroke you can use? Is it in the context menu? And
then if you’re still finding the only way to do something
is to go to the ribbon and tab through a whole bunch
of things, then it may be worth the effort. It is a little bit
cumbersome there to customize the ribbon. But that
may be a good route for certain things. It’s very
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personal and it has a lot to do with what you know
about is there, what you use and so on.
The other thing that you can try, which I have mixed
feelings about, is to install the classic menu toolbars
for versions of office. There is one for home and
student, and there is one for professional and all of
the different versions for Office 2010 or 2007 that you
can think of. You can access those through the
Microsoft website and at the end I can put the link to
that into the chat window because I think that would
probably be easiest, the easiest way to get it to you.
Basically if you don’t know what that is it adds a tab to
the ribbon and it’s not going to replace your ribbon
with a menu bar, like they had in 2003, but you will
have an extra tab in the ribbon with a choice for file
and a choice for edit with all the same choices in
there.
Part of the problem with the ribbon that people have
expressed is that it’s just a lot of pressing of the tab
key. It takes a while to get to what you want. The
other issue is that sometimes things are not where
you think they should be. Like for example, in Excel
we’ve always made a big effort to learn the difference
between cells and rows and columns. And now for
insert, delete and format of cells, rows, columns and
worksheets they’ve lumped them all together. So if
you didn’t know where they moved that too, you’re
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going to have a hard time finding it. And that is the
home tab of the ribbon, by the way.
Some people are bothered by the fact that things are
in a different location. It’s all still there it might just be
in a different place. Another thing you can do if you’re
using JAWS 12 is they do have the virtual ribbon
option. It’s just another way to deal with the ribbon. It
is not available in prior versions of JAWS and Brian
can demonstrate that in a minute here. It doesn’t
really matter if we go over to Excel or Word but we’ll
have to go over there and go into the adjust JAWS
option dialogue.
We’re going to do insert V to go into adjust JAWS
option dialogue. And we’re going to go down to virtual
ribbon; by default the virtual ribbon menu is off. We’re
going to spacebar to turn it on and then I want to
actually read the read-only edit field that comes next
to give you an idea of what the description is of how
you would use it. So just tab once to the read-only
edit field and then you can read with up or down
arrows and just get that description. Then we’re going
to tab to close and then press Alt to go to the ribbon.
Let’s say we want page layout, let’s right arrow to
page layout, that’s going to be the thing and then
you’re going to down arrow. Let’s say you wanted this
choice, lets right arrow, go ahead and down arrow.
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I guess it kind of gives you a feel of menus and
submenus. It’s just another way to interact with the
ribbon. If you feel like this makes more sense to you,
if you haven’t used the ribbon it might be better for
you. It might be an easier adjustment at this point. I’m
pretty used to using the ribbon, so to me this feels a
little strange. That’s possible you would feel the same
way if you’ve been using the ribbon for awhile. It’s all
very personal. These are all just options for how you
can interact with the ribbon, how you can deal with
some of the issues of it just taking a while for you to
get to the thing you want. The ribbon is obvi0ously
very visual and sometimes when you’re clicking with
the mouse and doing things in the same group you
don’t have to worry about getting your focus back
there like you do with the keyboard. It may make
more sense to you to use some of these other
options.
Some things that have changed in each of the
programs, in Word one of the big things that’s
changed is your find, when you do Control F for
finding text in your document. Now when you do
Control F it brings you into the document navigation
pane and search. My experience with this has been
that when it finds the first word, sometimes it will read
the word in context and sometimes it doesn’t. I’m
talking about JAWS specifically at this moment, so
maybe with Window Eyes you’ll have a different
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experience. As you press enter to find the next
occurrence of the word as you would in older version
of Word with the old style find, it tended to read the
word you were leaving in context. The context of the
previous word instead of the context of the word you
were on, which I found to be confusing.
A lot of what you can do in there is to click on
passages and move them, like if you’ve used
headings to designate sections you can click and drag
with the mouse and move sections around. Primarily
why I think a lot of people would do Control F would
be because they’ve always done that to find text in a
document. If you want to use the old find instead, they
actually call it “Advanced Find” now and this is 2010,
you can do the old style keystroke that would come
from 2003, which would be Alt E, as in the old edit
menu; Alt E as in edit. Then F for find and that will
bring up the regular find and replace dialogue that
you’re used to. It functions the same way as it always
has.
Alternatively the 2010 ribbon command would be Alt
H as in home tab and then F as in find and then D as
in dog and A as in apple. In other words if you were
really going to press that you’d hold down Alt, hit H.
Let it go and then press F; let it go, then press D, let it
go and then press A, let it go. Whatever your
preference is there, I have an easier time doing Alt E,
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let it go and then do F. Personally I think that’s easier.
But everybody’s brain processes differently and you
might prefer the other command. Either one will get
you into what they call the advance find now, which
you will also find in the home tab of the ribbon.
If you are going to go the long way to get there,
meaning if you’re going to press Alt to go to the
ribbon, a left or right arrow to home tab and then start
to tab or shift tab through the commands. Since it’s
way over to the right you’re going to want to shift tab if
you’re going to go that route because it will be less
shift tabs that it will be tabbing to this choice.
Somebody asked can you still use the context menu
to do the cell formatting? I’m going to come back to
that question. I think I’m actually going to come back
to all of those questions because I think we’ve gotten
away from there. Sorry I missed some of those
questions when we were in the other window.
Stuff that they’ve added to Office in general is the
accessibility checker which you’ll find within the
backstage view, which might be something that is
more useful when you’re creating documents for other
people that are using screen readers or screen
magnification and also to encourage people in your
office to use. I only looked at it briefly and found that
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when I had a picture in a document it told me that I
didn’t do any Alt text for that picture in the document.
A couple things in Excel, there weren’t anything really
big that I had noted here. One of the things in general
they said that in Excel 2010 they’ve improved the
accuracy of some of the formulas for people in the
science field. So, probably for people working in an
office that may not be as significant a change. One of
the things they talked about, when I was looking it up
they talked about it repeatedly was spark lines. I just
felt like I would mention this incase people are excited
about them; people in your office are using them.
Basically it’s a visual representation of the data in a
cell. It’s almost like a little chart within a cell.
The problem is that there is information there but
JAWS, I don’t know how Window Eyes would handle
it but JAWS says “blank.” So basically your screen
reader may not read that. Since it’s one of the new
things that they kind of brag about people might be
excited and start to use it. And so if you’re in past
versions of Excel it hasn’t indicated that there is a
drop down. And with both JAWS 11 and 12 in 2007
and 2010 it does say auto filter drop down. That’s
something in both versions that’s notable.
In PowerPoint there are starting to be better ways you
can share presentations with people and have them
actually be able to access the videos, if you have
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videos and sounds that are not part of PowerPoint.
Lots of times people might email a presentation and if
there are videos and sounds that are not part of
PowerPoint you’ll lose those. The rest of the
presentation is there when you receive that email but
you lost those things. Now when you insert videos
and sounds they’re embedded into the presentation
automatically and so they’re included in that file and in
the email attachment.
I would assume there is a possibility that there could
be a size issue with sending those types of
attachments. There is an option before you send the
email attachment in the backstage, before you do Alt
F. There’s a choice under info called “compress
media” and the choice you would probably want is
“low quality” because that’s what they recommend
when sending via email attachment. It makes it more
compressed so that hopefully you’ll be able to send
that with no problem. I haven’t really experimented
with that, purposely making a large presentation with
lots of videos to see what would happen but certainly
it’s worth checking out if you’re in that situation where
you’re trying to send people presentations and they’re
losing the videos.
You can also create your presentation and turn it into
a Windows Media file. That’s an option in the
backstage as well, under save and send; create a
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video and then you have to go to create a video
again. In Outlook, probably the biggest thing in the
Outlook window is that in 2010 you now have a ribbon
in the main Outlook window, whereas in 2007 you still
had a menu bar for some reason. In 2007 you had a
ribbon within message windows when you’re reading
or writing a message. You have a ribbon; the main
Outlook window of 2007 had a menu bar. Now 2010
is all ribbon, also has the backstage view, so all of
those programs are the same.
Information or different things that you might not be
able to find because now they’re in a different place
because there is a ribbon, things like add account,
account settings, cleanup tools like empty deleted
items folder, managing rules; which is also duplicated
in the home tab and alerts are in Alt F for backstage
view and then info. Under open in the backstage view
you have a choice for open calendar, import files and
settings. Other things that you may have wanted to
change in the past like your mail format, like you want
to be your editor. You’re going to find that in the
backstage view Alt F and then under options. Those
are some places you may want to check out to see
what’s in a different place. You’re still going to be able
to do Control Y, go to folder if you use that command
to go to sent items or deleted items. Your commands
for doing your basic email things, send, new
message, reply, all of those types of things are the
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same. IT’s just things are slightly moved around now
because you do have a ribbon in the main Outlook
window.
One other thing to note that someone had brought up
recently is that a lot of people like to do, when you
have a message with an attachment, they like to be
on that message in the message list. Hit the
applications key and choose “view attachment” and
then you can up or down arrow through the attached
files that are there. And that is no longer an option in
2010 so you could right from the inbox message list
you could go down to the file tab of the ribbon, Alt F
and then there is a choice for save attachments there.
You could do it through the message window itself.
You can move, shift tab up to the attachments, readonly edit, make sure your focus is on it. Hit your
application key there and choose open but I haven’t
found another alternative to doing that applications
key and choosing your attachments from the
message list. It sounds like a lot of people really liked
that choice and for some reason they got rid of it.
The interesting thing is that I did seen mentioned of it,
the ability to do that in Office 2010 help for Outlook
but it’s not an option. So I’m not really sure why they
left the help about it in there but they took the option
away.
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Brian Charlson
Okay, we’re going to add one more thing. We have to
cut to the chase because we want to leave time for
questions. But we do want to give you a couple of
hints for those of you who may also be screen
magnification users, some of the things that you might
want to keep in mind as you make that transition to
Office 2010.
Heather Campbell
These are actually a couple of things that are going to
be true for you both in 2007 and 2010. But maybe
things to just know and keep a list of and if you are
able to give Microsoft some feedback, maybe you
might mention these things. The colors that were
available in 2007 in the Office program not the
Windows colors; are still the same as they used to be.
The silver, black and blue that you could change to,
which none of which are really a great contrast but
those are all still choices.
The resolution that you choose effects what you see
in the ribbon in terms of things being more expanded
or not. If you’re talking to somebody or you have a
resource book of some sort, they may mention that
some item is showing but if you dropped your
resolution you may actually not see that until you click
on another button. Also the location of information in
the title bar in both versions of 2007 and 2010 are still
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in the middle of the screen, horizontally in the middle
rather than over on the left hand size where it used to
be. Your screen magnification may have, if it has
some speech, may have a command that will read the
title bar for you. But if you want to look at it visually it’s
still pretty tricky to get over there and look because
it’s not just in the corner.
One other thing I actually forgot to mention that really
just has more to do with Word in both 2007 and 2010.
It is still true in 2010 that you have all of that extra line
spacing. It’s one of those things with a screen reader
you don’t hear but in a lot of documents it looks pretty
goofy that it’s not single or double line spacing, it’s
multiple line spacing. There is extra blank space after
a paragraph. And you probably want to change that.
To do that you can do Alt H for home tab and then PG
to go into the paragraph dialogue. Then again you’re
going to change the line spacing to be single or if
you’d rather it be double, fine. It’s going to say [“after
edit spin box”] because it’s actually spacing after a
paragraph. That should probably be zero unless you
want all of this extra blank space.
And where it will be most noticeable visually is if
you’re creating something like a letter where you have
somebody’s name and then you press enter and then
there street address and you press enter. Every time
you press enter that’s creating a new paragraph and
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it’s also creating all of this extra space. If you make
those changes in the paragraph dialogue it’s a space
they did not have prior to 2007. Those things are still
true and still there is not really a great way for you to
know with your screen reader that the extra spaces
there.
Brian Charlson
Okay, we end to the hour. We’ve only got about six
minutes to the hour so I’m going to release the
microphone.
Caller
I wonder if that would Alt I when you use it with
Outlook 2010 for getting an attachment. Does that still
work? Or do you have to use another key? Because I
use Alt I and then enter and shift tab to go into my
documents and choose the attachment. Does that still
work with 2010?
Heather Campbell
In prior versions or prior to 2007, you would have
done Alt I to insert an attachment. Are you talking
about inserting an attachment or reading an
attachment?
Caller
Inserting an attachment.
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Heather Campbell
Now because you have a ribbon you would do Alt N
for insert and then AF for attach file or you could tab
to the attach file button.
Billy Brookshire
Okay, folks do we have more questions via the
microphone? We have quite a few in the chat room
here, you guys, if you want to check those out and
see if they are ones you’d like to answer or I could
read those if you would prefer.
Amy Salmon
Hi, it’s Amy Salmon. I do have a question for you
Brian and Heather. I had a student this morning that
was using Microsoft Excel Commercial 2010 and was
having problems with JAWS interacting with the
commercial version. Do we know if JAWS is
supporting commercial 2010?
Brian Charlson
I really don’t know the answer to that question, quite
honestly. I’m trying to think if I’ve ever had any client
who has come to the Carol Center with the quote,
commercial version, in the past and I don’t think we
have. Professional, yes, but not commercial; I think
that’s going to have to be something directed directly
at Freedom.
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Billy Brookshire
We have questions, folks, related to legacy view;
could you talk about that a little?
Brian Charlson
When we saw the description of what we were going
to do today and it said legacy view, we madly went on
to the interview and looked up legacy view because
it’s not the term we were familiar with. And we were
not successful in finding something anybody reviewed
to as legacy view. Can somebody, maybe I know it
under a different term or Heather knows it under a
different term.
Billy Brookshire
Amy, do you know that term by any chance?
Amy Salmon
I’ve heard it been thrown around in discussions of
Office 2010 but then again when Brian and Heather
and I started working together on this presentation I
went out and did some searching too. I think it’s a
term that’s being used to describe the menu that
Heather mentioned, that you can download and install
in your Office Suite products that gives you the edit
menu. I forget what you called that Heather but it’s an
add-on that you can put into your Microsoft Word,
Excel, PowerPoint ribbons. I think that’s what they
meant when they were saying the “legacy.”
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Billy Brookshire
Thanks, Amy. Briand and Heather it might be talking
about the classic view. Any of these questions you
guys want to talk about related to zoom techs or the
quick access tool bar or the context menu for cell
formatting?
Caller
I have a question. I’ve had that problem typically more
with Excel but have experienced it in other Office
applications. I typically like to use high contrast black
and I’ll find that I’ll enter all of my data into Excel and
everything is fine and great but then when I go to
share it with somebody or if I go to, worse, even go to
print it a lot of times instead of getting what I want
now if it’s using up my whole printer ribbon, dumping
all of that black, black ink to print the thing. Is there
any kind of solution for that?
The other problem is basically that the font ends up
being the same color as the background so nobody
can see it. I’ll send them information and they’ll say
there is nothing there. Are there any suggestions on
how to take care of that?
Heather Campbell
In regards to the last question, problems like that
have occurred sort of in different version over time. I
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don’t have a definite answer of something that might
work. But if you’re still able to do the hotkey for
turning on and off the high contrast, which used to be
left Alt, left shift, print screen. And probably if you go
into the control panel you will probably find and option
for that still. You may try reverting back to the
standard colors or whatever the default color scheme
is in whatever version of windows you’re using. Then
maybe try saving the file and seeing if that makes a
difference. That would be an experience. I’m not sure
for 100% that that would work but it might be
something that’s worth trying.
I wanted to say one more thing about legacy. In
looking up legacy view and what does legacy mean?
It’s also used to mean “old” so it’s possible that
someone could have meant “saving as an older
format.” So if you’re using 2007 or 2010 and you’re
sending to somebody who has 2003 and they haven’t
downloaded and installed the converter you want
them to be able to access your document, then you
can save it as an older file format in the save as
dialogue box. You start out in the file name edit fields
you can tab once to save as type and down arrow to
choose Word 97-2003 document. The default is just,
I’m using Word as an example, and the default is just
Word document and that means 2007 or 2010, the
.docx version.
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Also in the backstage view under options, you can
change what you save files as by default, whether you
want them to be 97-2003, which will be the .doc, the
dot d-o-c versus the 2007 or 2010 format, which
would be dot d-o-c-x or .docx. I’m going to look
through some of these other questions here but feel
free to ask any additional ones through the
microphone.
Somebody asked about is the quick access toolbar
also recommended to add commonly used
commands? If you’re using 2007 you can add
commands to the quick access tool bar. You can’t
change the ribbon like you can in 2010 so if you’re
using 2010 I’m not sure what the value would be in
adding items to the quick access toolbar because you
can change them. You can do both so I guess if you
have a reason to think that the quick access toolbar
would be better for you to change then by all means
do that.
Caller
Is there tutorial available to learn a little bit more
about 2010, Outlook 2010?
Heather Campbell
I’m sorry, can you repeat the question?
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Caller
Is there a tutorial available for learning Office and
Word 2010 because I went from 2003 to 2010 and I
went from XP to Windows 07 so I’m just wondering if
there a tutorial that you can go in and learn a little
more about it and how to navigate it?
Brian Charlson
There are a lot of places that are doing tutorials. The
real question when it comes to these kinds of things is
how truly up to date are they? There are so many
variables involved that I will tell you that you might
take a look at tutorials out of Access Technology
Institute with Cathy Ann Murpha. She has a number
of tutorials that she’s published. Again that’s Access
Technology Institute. Another place you might look is
Dewitt and Associates out of New Jersey. They
publish a lot of training manuals. I need to warn you
with respect to Dewitt and Associates that the quality
of their stuff is excellent and the price is steep for that.
We have one course through CarrollTech.org, that’s
C-A-double R-O-double L-T-E-C-H-dot –O-R-G that
we’ll be releasing very shortly. It’s on Office 2007,
specifically Excel, and it’s a complete course, from
soup to nuts, from I’ve never used Excel before to I
can do virtually anything you can ask for in Excel. By
going to that you will learn to properly use the ribbon
kind of an approach toward things and can apply that
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to other activities as well. Again, this is an online
course and you can find out more information about it
at carrolltech.org.
Amy Salmon
Hi, it’s Amy Salmon; I’m just jumping in here. Hadley
also introduced a new course in February called
“Screen Readers Formatting Word Documents” it’s an
online course. It’s two lessons and it goes through
some more advanced formatting features than
Microsoft Word. It is using Microsoft Word 2007 or
2010. As well we do have the Excel course which is
probably similar to what Carroll Tech is offering that
works with Microsoft Excel 2007 and 2010. If you
have questions about any of those course feel free to
contact me. My email is salmon@hadley.edu or you
can call the Hadley phone number and ask for Amy
Salmon.
John Yipp
I have a question. My name is John Yipp from Nova
Scotia, Canada. First of all I’d like to say “hi” to Karen
in Newfoundland and I’d like to know what is the
difference between Office 2007 and Office 2010
because right now I’m using Office 2007 on a
Windows 07 machine and I find it works just perfect.
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Ally Shoeman
My name is Ally Shoeman and I’m calling from
Syracuse, New York. I am thinking of getting a new
computer. I do use Office 2003 with Windows XP but I
have JAWS 12. I am wondering if I will have difficulty
switch over. From what you’re saying it doesn’t sound
it and also I wanted to say that anybody interested in
going to the Carroll Center, I had the opportunity of
going there in 1986 when they were first introducing
something they call [Dost] and I didn’t know what it
was. But I found out shortly, it’s a wonderful place to
go and have to stay. Thank you.
Brian Charlson
We’re going to try and answer the first question and
thanks for the endorsement from the second speaker.
The first question is “What is the difference between
Office 2007 and Office 2010?” They are primarily the
same thing. The things that you’ll notice the most is
2007 Outlook does not have a ribbon, 2010 Outlook
does have a ribbon. There will be some extra features
in 2010 though they tend to be esoteric types of
features that not everybody by any means would use.
From the accessibility point of view the best
advantage from going from 2007 to 2010 is the ability
to while within one of the ribbons, being able to
consistently move from group to group within a ribbon
tab. You can get to home and do that control right
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arrow and jump to the first control in each group,
rather than sometimes moving there and sometimes
not. And rather than having to tab maybe 30 times to
get from the first control within that ribbon to the last
control within that ribbon. Again, if you’re using the
ribbons a lot to get to things and not using quick keys
of one form or another, you will find that the
navigation of the ribbons is a distinctly improved
experience.
Billy Brookshire
Sorry, folks we’re actually one minute away from
being ten minutes over time and the questions are
absolutely wonderful. I’d like to let it go on forever but
I know our speakers have other priorities they need to
take care of. I just want to thank you all for asking
lots, and lots and lots of good questions. Please keep
them coming. They’ve offered lots of resources to
kind of help out with those, Brian and Heather both.
Brian and Heather, I want to thank you both for
helping us out here. That presentation was absolutely
wonderful.
I want to remind everyone that this seminar like all
seminars is archived on our website. It’s available
24/7 365. Please feel free to check out any of these
after any of these webinars, after they’re closed just
go to “past seminars” and you can find them there.
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Amy has already mentioned some Hadley courses.
Amy right now is teaching three screen reader
courses that are absolutely wonderful; One to improve
your listening using a screen reader and one for
surfing the internet and another for formatting Word
documents. I appreciate, Amy, that you joined us
today.
For all of you, thanks for participating. We value you
your feedback. Please if you would let us know what
you thought of the seminar and if you’ve got any
future seminar topics you’d like to suggest you can do
that by sending an email to feedback@hadley.edu.
That’s feedback@hadley.edu . I’m going to hand the
microphone back to Brian and Heather for any final
farewell words. You guys got anything to say to our
folks?
Brian Charlson
I think the most important thing both Heather and I
would like to say is thank you for coming. Thank you
for staying and if you have any questions associated
with today’s seminar and you would like to peruse that
with us a bit, feel free to drop us an email with your
question. You can reach Heather at
Heather.Campbell C-A-M-P-B-E-L-L @Carroll, C-Adouble R-O-double L dot O-R-G or you can reach me
at Brian.Charlson and that’s C-H-A-R-L-S-O-N. Again
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@carroll.org. Thank you for inviting us and everybody
have a good day.
Caller
Thanks very much, Brian and Heather and see you
guys later.
Amy Salmon
Thank you Brian and Heather, I really appreciate you
doing this. I know it’s going to be a valuable resource
for all of our Hadley students as a past seminar. And I
will be referring quite a few people to go back and
listen to it if they missed it today.
Billy Brookshire
And thanks everybody for coming. We appreciate you
being here. So many folks and so early at that – thank
you all very, very much. Brian and Heather, I really
enjoyed your presentation today. From the number of
questions and the excitement I can tell that everybody
else did too. Thanks again for doing this. Folks we
wish you all a great day. Take care of yourselves,
bye-bye.
[End of Audio – 1:03:24]
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