Monitor Cells - JAWS V15 - MS Excel

Using Monitor Cells to Read Data in Excel

From a speech point of view MS Excel has always had something of an unforgiving reputation. While other applications like MS Word and Outlook allow you to achieve a great deal without having an extensive set of JAWS keystrokes in your armoury, Excel is one of those applications that gives you back what you put in. There's just no fluffing around with it, the bottom line is that for a good Excel experience you need to have a good knowledge of the JAWS keystrokes.

In this post I am going to talk about one of those often overlooked JAWS and Excel features, it's called monitor cells. This particular feature has actually been part of the JAWS and Excel make-up for a long time but, from my own experiences, is not an option that is widely used.

So, how do these monitor cells work and what are they good for? Before I answer those questions, let's get an example data region to work with and give us a bit more context:

Fruit	Bought	Sold
Apples	250	250
Lemons	200	150
Pears	225	200
Bananas	300	275
Limes	150	125
TOTALS	1125	1000

In the simple table above you have one column containing the row headings, one column containing quantities bought and another containing quantities sold. In my actual Excel version, the Total cells each contain a simple SUM statement, for example: =SUM(B2:B6).

What is a Monitor cell?

In the above data region let's assume that some of that raw data I have in the Sales column is incorrect or needs updating. Clearly, if I change any of that data the formula cells containing the Totals are going to contain new values. The problem with that when I am using speech output is that I need to manually move to that formula cell to be able to read it. This is a PITA - it creates a tension where, to check up on the changes as I work, I have to continually refocus with the PC Cursor to understand the impact of what I am doing across my worksheet. Enter the humble monitor cell, by creating one of these I can read the cell content directly whenever I want while I continue to work elsewhere in the worksheet - no refocusing required!

Let's run through how to set them and read them:

Setting and Reading Monitor Cells in JAWS V15

1. Open an existing Excel worksheet or create a new one - perhaps based around the Fruit Sales table I presented earlier.
2. Move to the specific cell you need to monitor - generally, this is a cell that contains a formula but can be any cell you require.
3. Use the keystroke of INSERT SHIFT 0-9 (for example: INSERT SHIFT 0) to set a monitor cell. Note you can have a total of ten individual monitor cells set at any time.
4. Now that you have the monitor cell marked, move the cursor to a different cell in the worksheet and use ALT SHIFT with the corresponding keystroke 0-9 to read the cell content. For example, if you used INSERT SHIFT 0, use ALT SHIFT 0. If you set a monitor cell with INSERT SHIFT 5, then read it with ALT SHIFT 5.
5. Now that your monitor cell is set you can also launch a JAWS listbox to show all of the monitor cells in the current worksheet. Activate this using CONTROL SHIFT M, navigate the list with your UP and DOWN ARROW and use the ENTER key to move the cursor to that specific cell.

And that's it - pretty neat I hope you'll agree. What's more, all the monitor cell information is stored individually and will be permanent even when you switch off your PC. Bear in mind though, if the worksheet changes its name in the future you'll probably have to reapply the monitor cell settings to create the link again.

In our above Fruit Sales data region setting and reading JAWS monitor cells might seem a bit overkill and you're probably right. But... imagine that instead of five rows of data you actually had five thousand? Imagine that instead of two simple SUM based statements there were many, many more formulae dotted around the worksheet? When you're working on that scale, JAWS monitor cells really do start to shine.

Have fun!

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