MS Word on Mac: VoiceOver silent in tables

By PaulMartz, 15 September, 2024

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

Description of problem: I'm in MS Word, down-arrowing through lines of text. VoiceOver reads each line as expected. I reach a table. VoiceOver announces the table and number of rows and columns as expected.

But as I down arrow through the table, VoiceOver is silent. Tab and Shift+Tab are also silent.

I've tried VO+F3, Option+Down Arrow, VO+P, and VO+L. All are silent. I've toggled VO off and on. No luck.

Is there a fix or workaround for this? Thanks for any help.

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Comments

By Igna Triay on Wednesday, September 18, 2024 - 18:27

Your best bet is to contact microsoft, apple cant do anything about this one.

By PaulMartz on Wednesday, September 18, 2024 - 18:27

Just a few minutes ago, I arm-twisted it into working for one table. But when I navigated out and back in, I couldn't get it to work a second time.

I know it's navigating the table. As I enter, VoiceOver tells me how many rows, and if I simply down arrow silently that many times, the text cursor exits the table and enters the text that follows, and VoiceOver reads it as if nothing had happened.

So I was hoping there was some magic incantation that someone might know.

By Brian on Wednesday, September 18, 2024 - 18:27

Hey Paul,

How do you have VO navigation setup in the settings? Also have you tried interacting with the contents of said table?

What it sounds like, is that VO is layering the table contents, which is rather inconveenient, but my only thoughts would be to set navigation to be flat (I cannot remember what that is actually called), and try interacting within each cell.

HTH.

By TheBllindGuy07 on Wednesday, September 18, 2024 - 18:27

From my own experience, voiceover might announce table cells and coordonates if there is some text in them. At least it used to work 4-5 months ago when I last tried word on mac.

By Bryan Jones on Wednesday, September 18, 2024 - 18:27

Hi Paul,
I'm able to interact with tables and navigate from cell-to-cell using VO+arrow keys. However, I am unable to reliably add or edit data, or navigate within a cel using arrows or between cells using the tab key.

Word for Mac Version 16.90 (24090417)
macOS Sequoia 15 (latest public beta)
MacBook Air M1, 2020