navigating message table in mail on Mac

By Dennis D, 24 April, 2021

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

I am using a Macbook pro 2018 OS 11.2.3. I am navigating the table for my mail messages using vo <arrow keys>. Currently when I navigate down in a column I hear the item in the cell, like from or subject. When I navigate in the same row I am taken back to the top row and need to navigate down to get to the message I want to read. This makes it pretty difficult to find the message I want to read. Sometimes it will actually read a row cell by cell, but most of the time it will not. Anything I need to do to get this to work?

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Comments

By Kevin Shaw on Friday, April 30, 2021 - 02:34

Are you using the classic view or the regular view for viewing your message table?
I have my Mail set up in regular view and I use the arrow keys to navigate up and down. I fI only want to hear the subject field of a message as I scroll up or down, I will interact and use VO-right arrow until I find the subject field and navigate that way.
To jump to the top or bottom of the message list, use option-command up or down arrow.

Hope this is helpful.

I am not able to find how to switch from regular view to classic. I am also noticing that I can navigate the rows and columns of the message headers like from, date subject. When I vo arrow to the cell it does not read out the contents of the cell automatically.

By Tyler on Friday, April 30, 2021 - 02:34

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

If I'm not mistaken, classic view is referred to as column layout in recent versions of macOS, and is enabled by choosing View > use column layout.

For me, I don't use column layout and can simply focus on the messages table and use the up and down arrow keys, without interacting, to read all the cells in a given row.

HTH

By Dennis D on Friday, April 30, 2021 - 02:34

In reply to by Tyler

Yes your comment is helpful. Also for navigating the columns and rows, I restarted voiceover and the screen reader's response was restored to reading all cells as I moved around. Thanks for your help

By PaulMartz on Friday, April 30, 2021 - 02:34

I have Use Column Layout selected.

Like Tyler, typically I don't interact with the table and use up and down arrow to read the entire row. I can also jump to a desired message using first-letter navigation.

If I do interact with the table, I can navigate normally to any cell using VO + Arrow keys.

I use VO+J to jump to the list of folders. When I VO+J again to return to the message table, I am already interacting by default, whether I was before or not, which is a little unintuitive.

Hope that helps.