Thanks very much for this valuable information.  Boy this is just what I need!

Hi Ron,

You are correct, and it is definitely a bug in Office (It works exactly the same with no screen reader running).  I have found one workaround, which is when you hear NVDA read "split button", you know the option opens a menu.  While enter or space should work, if you press alt+down arrow, it does open the menu.

Re items on the home ribbon, I have always had a bit of a concern with the Home ribbon.  After all, items on the other ribbons are more or less logical (there are a few, ok a lot, you could argue, but bear with me) - the Home ribbon, however, is purely what Microsoft THINK people need access to more regularly.

I couldn't understand why half the Word home ribbon was taken up with Styles when Word 2007 came out - after all, a good portion of Word users still likely couldn't tell you what styles are, let alone use them.

Back to inserting rows and columns specifically, and I can give you another way to do that as well:

CONTROL+SHIFT+= (CONTROL, SHIFT and EQUALS) or CONTROL+PLUS.

If you have one or more full rows selected (SHIFT+SPACEBAR btw) when you press this, it will automatically insert one or more rows above the selected rows (same number of rows as you have selected).

If you have one or more full columns selected (CONTROL+SPACEBAR for that one), then it inserts columns.

If you don't have a full row or column selected, it will open a dialog asking whether you want to shift cells right, shift cells down, insert a row or insert a column.

(Note that those are all Excel commands, there is nothing specific to NVDA there.)

Here endeth the lesson :)  All this and more will be in the Microsoft Excel with NVDA training module, which will be available later this year.

Regards

Quentin.

On Sat, Feb 18, 2017 at 5:37 PM, Ron Canazzi <aa2vm@...> wrote:

Hi Group,


I have started a new thread on this ribbon business since some have complained that the other thread had drifted away from the original intent.


Here's one big issue with ribbons and Excel.

If one wants to insert a structural element of a work book such as a row, column area or sheet, one cannot do this by navigating the ribbons.  The short cut which I will describe does work, but this was given to me by someone who figured it out with sighted help.


First of all, try looking for the items under the insert portion of the ribbon.  They simply aren't there.  Then via experimentation and observation, you find a separate insert item under the home portion of the ribbon under general.  There's a problem, if you simply navigate to the insert item, and press either enter or space bar, nothing happens.  somehow if you use the shortcut alt + h, I, you do get a list of items.  You can then pick the desired item and press enter and follow the prompts or whatever.  If you don't know the designated shortcut sequence, you simply can't find this item and get it to work with screen readers: JAWS or NVDA.


I know I have seen this in other Microsoft programs such as Access and Power Point as well.


I'm sorry folks, using ribbons does not give full access to screen reader users in many programs as we used to have under the standard drop down or pull down menus.


--
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Quentin Christensen
Training Material Developer

Basic Training for NVDA & Microsoft Word with NVDA E-Books now available: http://www.nvaccess.org/shop/

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--
They Ask Me If I'm Happy; I say Yes.
They ask: "How Happy are You?"
I Say: "I'm as happy as a stow away chimpanzee on a banana boat!"