"keyboard focus has no selection"

By Penelope, 17 December, 2022

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

Hello wonderful AppleVis peeps. I'm trying to help my elderly friend (whose opus novel I am editing) be more independent with his use of Voiceover and as such am having to learn myself.

You all have my utmost respect. Deep bows.

At the moment he wants to get easily into his 'recents' files.
I discovered that if he goes to his doc, opens Finder, we can use Command Shift 'f' to get to recents.

I can see today's recents on the screen, but the Voiceover says "Keyboard Focus has No Selection"

I have not been able to get into the list proper (List view) from there. It goes back to files from four years ago.

Nick needs simple text edit, which we've programmed to upload to our shared Dropbox, then we work together on the edits, me reading. He gets bumped out from time to time and can't easily get back. I thought the Cmd Shft f from finder would solve the issue.

Nick is 83 (and I'm no spring chicken at 63 either). We are both hugely grateful for all of you here and especially the guy who started it all. We are working with Ulysses on 1200 pages of brilliant writing because we found the program through your forum. I honestly think I would have torn my hair out if I'd had to use Word.

thanks in advance for any suggestions.
Penelope

Options

Comments

By Michael on Monday, December 26, 2022 - 22:11

Hello, Penelope.
First suggestion: go to Voiceover Utility > Navigation and look at the first oppption (Initial position of voiceover cursor). There are two options (Keyboard focused item, and First item in window). I do not know if this will work.
Second suggestion: Try ways of navigating, other than with arrow keys. For example changing desktops, then changing back to the previous desktop sometimes works. Or you could open mission control (fn+f3) and select the Finder app. I have found that this usually seems to reset the Voiceover cursor.

Good luck,
Michael

By Siobhan on Monday, December 26, 2022 - 22:11

I wrote a comment, didn't post it because I closed the window. Oops? Go look at navigation, but also voice over m, and open apple menu, go down to recent items. see if that works, it's much easier then the finder.

By Penelope on Monday, December 26, 2022 - 22:11

We're still tinkering with the suggested options -Michael's suggestion of the navigation tick box definitely helped immediately troubleshooting to reset the cursor opening mission control is a great idea - I've suggested Mission Control before, so we'll try that later today along with Siobhan's Apple Menu to find recents instead of finder.

Thank you so much! (Couldn't figure out how to reply to your kind responses)
Wishing you both a wonderful day.
Pen