JAWS Training Cribsheet for Windows XP

Better Living Through Technology

Charlie Danger

MICROSOFT WORD: Using Dialog Windows

Dialogs in word (or any other program) are accessible from the program’s menus. A menu item indicates that it will lead to a dialog by using the suffix “dot dot dot”.

Dialogs are small windows full of different controls such as buttons, lists, and checkboxes. You can practice using dialogs by running the HJPad program found in the JAWS folder in your Start Menu.

Open Dialog

The “Open dot dot dot” menu item can be found in the File menu. The Open dialog lets you open documents that you wish to read and/or edit. There are eight controls on the Word Open dialog. They follow in Tab order:

  1. Filename (Edit Dropdown Combo)
  2. Files of Type (Dropdown Combo)
  3. Open (Button)
  4. Cancel (Button)
  5. Save In (Combobox)
  6. Toolbar
  7. My Places Bar (Announced as My Recent Documents button)
  8. Folder View

The most important controls for opening files are the Folder View, where you locate the document you are after using the arrow keys, and the Open button.

Because you enter the dialog at 1. Filename it is much quicker to use SHIFT + TAB to move backwards to 8. Folder View than to TAB through all the other controls in a forward direction.

Save As Dialog

The Word Save Dialog is identical to the Open Dialog except the Open Button is a Save Button.

Save or Save As?

The ‘Save’ dialog saves the current file under its current name. The ‘Save As’ dialog lets you specify a new name for the file. This is useful if you edit a document but wish to keep the original and save a new copy. If the file you are currently working on is unnamed then word will automatically display the ‘Save As’ dialog even if you select ‘Save’.

Keeping you documents organised

You can create new folders when Saving files within the Save As Dialog. To do this use the TAB key until you find theToolbar (the first button on the Toolbar is “Back Listbox”). Use the arrow keys to find the Create New Folder toolbar button and press Enter to press the toolbar button. You are prompted to enter a name for your new folder. Enter a name and press ENTER.

Word will return to the Filename edit box on the Save As dialog. You are already in your new folder so you can go ahead and save your file now. To check which folder you are currently in you can Tab round to the Save In: announcement.

Print Dialog

The Print dialog has 16 controls on it. The three controls you will be using most are as follows. Since there are a lot of controls on this page it’s worth committing the keyboard shortcuts to memory:

  1. Number of Copies (Edit Spin Box) = ALT + C
  2. PageRange (Option Button & Edit Box) = ALT + G
  3. OK (Button) = ENTER

Other Dialogs

There are at least 90 other dialogs in Microsoft Word, most of which you will never have to use. When exploring new dialogs always follow the basic rule of using TAB and SHIFT + TAB to move around the dialog. If you want to have the whole dialog read aloud press INSERT + B.