Out of Office Assistant - Outlook 2007 - JAWS V15

Setting the Out of Office Assistant in Outlook 2007

As it is half term week it feels like it's the right time to recap on how to set up, switch on and switch off the Out of Office Assistant in Outlook. In this post I'm going to be using Outlook 2007 and making sense of it with my trusty JAWS V15.

The "Out of Office Assistant" is one of these operations that, in earlier versions of the application, I always found to be pretty straightforward but, with Outlook 2007 and 2010 for that matter, I've found it a bit of a trickier process. I don't know if things have changed again in the most recent Outlook 2013 but since the 2007 move to a multi-tab page layout, I've just found it naturally less intuitive than I used to. Anyway, I'm going to go through the way I have it figured out and this works for me so I hope that it gives you some ideas of how to tackle the layout.

Configuring the Out of Office Assistant

1. Open Outlook 2007 and ensure that you have focus in the Inbox.
2. Press ALT T to open the main Tools menu.
3. Press the DOWN ARROW to move to the Out of Office Assistant menu item and press ENTER to activate it. You can also tap the U key to launch it directly instead of using the ARROW keys.

4. Focus moves to the Out of Office dialog box, specifically the two radio buttons at the top. One of these options, labelled "Do not send out of office replies" is already checked. From there tap the DOWN ARROW to select the other radio button, labelled "Send out of office auto-replies". Each of these radio buttons has a dedicated hotkey that you can use to activate the relevant radio button from anywhere in the dialog box, these keys are as follows:
• Do Not Send Out of Office Replies: ALT N
• Send Out of Office Auto-Replies: ALT S
5. When you select the "Send Out of Office Auto-Replies" radio button, previously unavailable form fields now become active. Press TAB to move to the Only Send During This Time Range: checkbox and check or uncheck this using the SPACEBAR. If you activate this option, you will have the opportunity to set some extra date and time information in several text input fields that you can TAB through next. Personally, I never use this but you might feel differently and I can see how, in some circumstances, it could be beneficial to set a time period within which the system generated messages are sent. If you do want to experiment with this, make sure you press TAB to move through the Start Date, Start Time, End Date and End Time edit fields in order and complete as necessary. Type the required information in using the following format:
• Date Format: DD/MM/YYYY (Example: 14/02/2015)
• Time Format: HH:MM (Example: 14:30)

Now we get to the twist in the plot! When you press TAB at this point you will have focus on an unlabelled button, another TAB takes you from there to an unlabelled edit field. If you continue to TAB you will reach a Menu Bar with some formatting options in it and you can TAB through that to get to the text area for you to input your actual message. Apart from the obvious labelling issues I also personally feel, from a speech point of view anyway, that using the TAB key to plough on doesn't serve me well. It also glosses over what is an important point about this dialog box: there is a large multi-tab area to explore that contains two distinct pages. The first page contains all of the auto-message options for people emailing from inside the organisation. The second page contains the auto-message options for people emailing you from outside your organisation.

6. So, from the Only Send During This Time Range: checkbox instead of instinctively pressing TAB - press SHIFT TAB five times to go back round, past the Cancel and OK buttons until you have focus on the Inside My Organisation tab - when you hear this you are now on the page heading tabs. At this point you can switch between the pages simply by using the RIGHT and LEFT ARROW KEYS.

Inside My Organisation: Setting the Out of Office Assistant

1. With focus now on the Inside My Organisation page tab, press SHIFT TAB once more to move to the associated text edit field. This is where you now type in your message that you wish to be sent automatically to people (within your organisation) who email you while you are out.
2. Press TAB to return focus to the Inside My Organisation page tab and press the RIGHT ARROW to put focus on the second page, labelled Outside My Organisation (On).

Outside My Organisation (On): Setting the Out of Office Assistant

1. With focus now on the Outside My Organisation (On) page tab, press SHIFT TAB to move to the text edit field as before and type in the message that will be automatically sent to people who are emailing you from outside your organisation.
2. Alternatively, you do have the option with the external facing email to actually turn this auto-message function off completely. If you want to do this, the quickest way is to use the keystroke of ALT U as this moves the cursor to the Auto-reply to people outside my organisation checkbox. Control the state of the checkbox as normal, using the SPACEBAR. When you disable this feature, the rest of the form will be made unavailable as it no longer applies and the label for the page will indicate Outside My Organisation (OFF) instead of Outside My Organisation (ON).
3. As well as turning the external email on and off you can fine-tune the function so that it only sends an automatic email to external senders who are in your Contact List, as opposed to everyone who emails. Once again, the best route here is to use the direct keystrokes for each option, these are:
• My Contacts only: ALT C
• Anyone outside my organisation: ALT A - (this being the default option in the series of two radio buttons.)
4. When you have input your messages and set all of the options, press the TAB key several times to reach the OK button and press the SPACEBAR to confirm everything and run the Out of Office Assistant.

Boo! Back from the Holidays, Turning the Out of Office Assistant Off

1. From the Inbox, press ALT T to open the Tools menu.
2. With the Tools menu open, press the U key to launch the Out of Office dialog box directly or navigate with the DOWN ARROW to the menu item and press ENTER.
3. The Out of Office Assistant dialog box will open, with the cursor focused on the second of the two main radio buttons ("Send out of office replies"). Press the UP ARROW to select the first radio button, labelled Do Not Send Out of Office Auto-replies and press the ENTER key to confirm. NOTE: You can also use direct keystrokes to control the selection between these two radio button options as I outlined earlier on in this post.

And there you have it! It may take a few passes through this dialog box to get the hang of it and you might find that you want to just TAB your way through it - if that works for you then great! For me, when I approached this in the usual manner by just trying to TAB all the way through, I really didn't find it particularly intuitive. But, being able to get to the page tabs quicker using SHIFT TAB gave me more of a context for what I was doing. Throw in a few of the direct keystrokes on top and the Out of Office stuff works okay with speech. And, y'know, it's not exactly the first time the tab order hasn't done me any favours and I am sure it won't be the last. But, let's not go there eh...?

Until next time - have fun!

Desktop Icons - Windows 7 - Recycle Bin - My Computer

Something that popped up in conversation the other day is how, on a Windows 7 computer, you put the Recycle Bin and Computer shortcut icons back on the Desktop. It's one of those annoying little knowledge nuggets that comes and goes for some AT users - not always at the right time!

So, let's sort this old and sometimes frustrating chestnut out right now, it's actually pretty straightforward with the live search tool.

Putting the Recycle Bin and My Computer Icons Back on the Desktop

1. Tap the WINDOWS key to open the Start Menu.
2. In the live search edit field, type in the following text to search for: show desktop icons.
3. Tap the DOWN and UP ARROW as necessary to focus on the Show or Hide Common Icons on the Desktop item. Press the ENTER key to activate it.

4. Focus now moves to the Desktop Icon Settings dialog box. This contains a group of checkboxes that allows you to switch the standard icons, such as Recycle Bin and Computer, on and off. Press TAB to move through the checkboxes and check and uncheck as necessary using the SPACEBAR.
5. Notice that each of the checkbox options also has a direct keystroke. I have listed them out here as you may find it quicker using them instead of tabbing around. The key list is as follows:
• Computer: ALT M
• User's Files: ALT U
• Network: ALT N
• Recycle Bin: ALT R
• Control Panel: ALT O
6. When you have activated the icons you need to place back on the Desktop and have finished exploring some of the other options, press TAB to move to the OK button and press SPACEBAR.

And that's it! All that is left for you to do now is to drop focus back to the Desktop and relive the glory days of Windows 95.

Until next time, have fun!

Zoomtext V10 Recorder - Keyboard - Audio - iTunes

One of the features in Zoomtext magnification and speech software I really enjoy using is the Recorder. In fact, in these mobile orientated days, I consider this feature is a bit of a slow burn and think there should be a bit more noise about it.

Zoomtext Recorder is one of two tools in the program that work with the current content of the Windows clipboard and, basically, it converts that current clipboard content into an audio file. It's a pretty straightforward process and, if you have a quality software synth on your computer and you are using Zoomtext, you have the ability to create a lot of bespoke audio content very swiftly. You can even go a little bit further than this because those audio files you create can even upload straight into an iTunes playlist, something I will cover in a short while. So, Zoomtext users, let's roll some speech here!

Using the Zoomtext Recorder to Record to a File

The first route I'm going to cover is the more manual, mouse-driven approach. This is perfect for those times where you just need to quickly create a standard, uncompressed (.WAV) audio file and save it somewhere on your computer.

1. Select a chunk of text in any document and copy it to the clipboard in the usual way (using the CONTROL C keystroke or by accessing the Copy option via the context/applications menu (right hand mouse button). Of course, you may want to select all the text in the document, in which case you can use the keystroke of CONTROL A to select everything.
2. With the text copied to the clipboard, go to the Tools toolbar and activate the Recorder button or access the Tools menu and activate the Recorder option in there.
3. The Zoomtext Recorder dialog box will open and your keyboard focus will be in the Track Name edit field. Type in a suitable name by over-writing the default text already there (normally, this is the first line of text in your selection) then move on to the Track Location field.

4. Set your save location for the audio file you are about to create by either typing in the full path or by accessing the associated Browse... button (ALT B)
5. Now move to and activate the Record Text button to start the audio file creation. By default, the file will be uncompressed (.WAV) so, depending on the amount of text you have copied this process may take a little while. Additionally, you may have a pretty big audio file on your hands!
6. When the audio file has been created, move to the Close button and activate it to close the Zoomtext Recorder dialog box.
7. Now locate your new audio file and play it!

Using the Zoomtext Recorder for Quick Audio Files in iTunes (Keystroke Route)

If you are looking to make this feature a bit more central in how you do your work and you use iTunes for synchronising then I would advise you to go down the following route. This is a much quicker way through using keystrokes and we'll be piping our results straight into a playlist in iTunes for further sorting. This playlist, called Zoomtext Recorder by default, functions in the same way as other playlists in iTunes. Let's try it out:

1. As in the above steps, select your text and copy it to the clipboard.
2. Press the keystroke of CONTROL CAPSLOCK S to record the text you have selected.
3. The Recorder dialog box opens directly, focus will be in the Track Name field as expected, but SHIFT TAB to move to the previous field labelled Record Text To and set this combo box to show iTunes. (Note that when you select iTunes here the Track Type and Track Location fields become unavailable.)
4. Press TAB to move back to the Track Name edit field and type in a name. If you are planning a series of recordings you might want to think about including a reference or a number at the beginning of the title.
5. Press the TAB key once again and focus will move to the Record Text button (ALT R) then use the SPACEBAR to activate. The conversion will now take place and at some point you'll probably see iTunes opening up in the background.
6. With the file created, tap the SPACEBAR to activate the currently focused Close button then ALT TAB into iTunes and check your playlists. You should notice a new addition - labelled Zoomtext Recorder - and you'll find your audio file in there. Note that if you create a second file using this method it will be added into the same playlist. This means that you can build up a whole playlist pro-actively from scratch - how about an IT Tips playlist, anyone...?

So there you go, if you are using Zoomtext and sync a lot of content via iTunes, please explore the Zoomtext Recorder - it's really nifty.

Until next time, have fun!

Search a Folder in Outlook 2007 - NVDA - JAWS - Keyboard

Searching a Folder in Outlook 2007

At work we are mainly using Office 2007 and one of the questions I am frequently asked is "how do I search my Inbox in Outlook 2007?" Now you might find that pretty strange - after all, isn't locating the right information a pretty fundamental and key thing that you'd want to do in Outlook? But it never fails to amaze me how many people struggle on trying to locate stuff manually, often moving through lists of emails one at a time to find what they are looking for.

The basic per-folder search in Outlook is actually a relatively straightforward and clean process and I am going to run through it here - it's a powerful tool to add to your repertoire, so it makes sense to give it a whirl at least. By the way, this all works fine with NVDA and JAWS.

Run a Basic Search in Your Inbox

1. Open Outlook 2007 and make sure focus is somewhere in your list of Inbox emails.
2. Press the keystroke of CONTROL E, focus will move to an edit field. Type in your search criteria.
3. As you type your search criteria, the list of items in the current folder is dynamically filtered to show only the matches for what you are typing in.
4. With your search criteria complete, press F6 (or press TAB several times) to put focus into the list of matched items.

NOTE: A quick way of checking how many matches you have for your search is to read the status line information which contains an item count. So, when you have run a search, press INSERT PAGE DOWN if you are using JAWS or INSERT END if you are rolling NVDA to read the status bar information. Notice how the item count is less than in your normal unfiltered folder.

5. In your filtered list of items, use the UP and DOWN ARROW keys to browse the matches for your search and locate your required information. That's it!

Clear the Search Filter for the Current Folder

1. When you have finished accessing the information you require, press CONTROL E to move back to the Search edit field.
2. Press TAB to move to the Clear Search button and press the SPACEBAR to activate. Your list of items in the folder will now return to normal.
3. If necessary, you can check the item list by reading the status bar directly, using the relevant JAWS or NVDA keystrokes I mentioned earlier.

Remember that you can use this Search feature across all of the folder functions in Outlook. So, try using it to locate specific contacts or tasks - I'm sure that after a bit of time you'll wonder just how you managed without it!

VoiceOver - iOS - iPad - Posting to Facebook Using Siri

Using Siri For Short Updates in Facebook

Did you know that you can easily use Siri to post short Facebook updates directly to your wall? Doing this is relatively straightforward when you use VoiceOver, this is how:

1. For this feature to work, you need to ensure that your Facebook app knows about your account details and that you are logged in. So, navigate to the main Settings area and locate the Facebook app entry. Complete the relevant information fields such as your Facebook account email address and the appropriate password. You may also want to fine tune other settings, switching off the access to your Calendar and Contacts apps and, via the Facebook app Settings option, turning off the Auto-play video option.
2. Before you try and post an update, if you have just input your details, go into the Facebook app and ensure that you are logged in fine and that what you typed in is correct and so on. When you confirm this you can leave the app and go back to the Home screen
3. Now, think about what you want to say then hold the Home button in on the iPad or iPhone to eventually launch Siri.
4. Use the voice command "Post to Facebook" then continue to dictate your short update text.
5. When you stop reading (or let go of the Home button) Siri will pipe up and work with VoiceOver to read what you are going to post back to you. You will then be given the option of agreeing to post the update or not and this is also done by using voice, so you can say either "yes" to post or "no" to cancel.
6. Now check your update in Facebook - that's it!

Deleting Apps - VoiceOver - iOS V8.1

Deleting an App on iOS with VoiceOver

Sooner or later, the myriad apps you have downloaded to your iOS device are going to need a bit of a spring clean. We are all used to a bit of clutter, but there does come a time when all of those free "great idea at the time" apps become a drain on capacity. But, the problem is, just how exactly do you delete those apps gathering dust when you are using VoiceOver? This is how:

1. Locate the individual app on your iOS device in your usual manner. Use the THREE FINGER SWIPE RIGHT and LEFT to move between the Home screen pages where necessary.
2. With focus on the specific app to delete, perform a sharp SINGLE FINGER DOUBLE TAP - but, on the second tap, keep your finger on the screen.
3. If the gesture has been correctly recognised, VoiceOver will say "moving ". If you hear this then you are in the correct edit mode but, if you do not hear this message, try the gesture again - it can be tricky!
4. In this edit mode, use a SINGLE FINGER DOUBLE TAP gesture to delete the targeted app. Focus will then move to a small message box asking you to confirm the action, so use your usual gestures to choose Delete or Cancel as appropriate.
5. When you have done this, press the Home button to leave the edit mode and you are done!

Okay, now there is no excuse for not having even the world's smallest springclean on your device. Besides, the sooner there is some extra space the sooner it can be filled again!

Until next time - have fun!

Reading An Accessible PDF - Dolphin Guide

Reading an Accessible PDF with Dolphin Guide

Dolphin Guide is an incredibly popular piece of AT, useful for anyone who wants to enjoy the feature benefits of a Windows PC without the accompanying headaches and complexity. My short post here is about how to approach reading an accessible PDF saved on your PC with Dolphin Guide. This is a pretty straightforward task (given a PDF document that plays ball of course but that's a whole other blog post) so let's just get on with it...

1. In the Main Menu press the 2 key to open the Letters and Documents Menu.

In the Letters and Documents Menu, press number 5 to launch the Open a PDF Document option.

2. The file navigator will open, so use the UP and DOWN ARROW keys to move to the appropriate location (such as "My Documents") and locate the relevant PDF document.
3. Pressing ENTER on the specific PDF will launch it and the reading will begin. If there is a problem with the file, in that Guide cannot read it, the speech output will indicate this and take you back to the Main Menu.
4. When you are reading the PDF you can use the keystroke of F5 or CONTROL M to switch between the different reading/viewing modes should you wish to. The three modes are as follows:
• Line by Line Mode: The default mode is to read one line at a time using the DOWN and UP ARROW keys. To read everything from the cursor on you can press F8.
• Paragraph Mode: Reads one paragraph at a time using the UP and DOWN ARROW keys. Read everything from the cursor onwards using F8.
• Magnify Only Mode: Use F12 to increase magnification and CONTROL F12 to decrease magnification of the document. Use the ARROW keys to move around the document when it is too big to fit on one screen.
5. Move between pages using PAGE DOWN and PAGE UP then, when you have finished reading, press the ESCAPE key to return to the Main Menu in Dolphin Guide.

Dolphin Guide is a great software tool, you can find more about it in the following little YouTube video: