Hello Bill, Sometimes people will merge cells in a column to keep large sections of text together instead of increasing row height. JAWS will read a merged range of cells the same way it does a single cell and will tell you the range. In your example you might have a lot of information to listen to at once. When you merge information in Excel 2007, you are placing data with the same data value in a range of cells instead of into one. If you have information already in several cells and try to merge them then Excel will let you know that there are cells with different data values trying to be merged and it will keep only the data in the top left cell of the range. Usually merging is done for such things as long strings of text like a title or a company name.
You can still use F2 to go into edit mode and read the text like you would in a word processor. Using up and down arrow keys will move from line to line within the merged range, pressing CTRL+home will go to the beginning, etc. When in edit mode in Excel the insert mode is on so you can add words between others, you can select and delete a specific amount of text in the range, and so forth. Your reading, navigating and editing commands should all work for you if you go into edit mode by using function key 2. If you want to add a new line in the cell then you need to use Alt+enter key to force the line break. If you use enter key then you will be brought out of edit mode. If you want to remove the merge and work with single cells then move focus into the merged range of cells and use CTRL+1 to bring up the format dialog. If the page of the dialog that appears is not the alignment page then use CTRL+tab until the alignment page tab is active. Use tab key to move across the controls in the alignment page until you get to a checkbox that determines whether or not merging is to be used. If the "merge cells" checkbox is checked then use a spacebar to remove the checkmark and tab to the OK button and press enter key. Take care. Brian Lee brianl...@charter.net -----Original Message----- From: jaws-users-list-boun...@jaws-users.com [mailto:jaws-users-list-boun...@jaws-users.com] On Behalf Of Bill Tipton Sent: Friday, March 12, 2010 4:01 PM To: jaws-users-list@jaws-users.com Subject: [JAWS-Users] Excel and Merged Cells Hi, How do you read an Excel work book with merged cells with JAWS 11? I have Excel 2007. The cells are merged in a variety of ways throughout. Example: a6-a47 are merged. Move one cell over to the right and: B6-b9 are merged. I need to read and edit this document and keep the formatting intact. If this is not possible with JAWS, I had 2 questions. 1. How can I unmerge all cells at once so I can read all of the data. 2. Is there some guidelines that talk about Excel accessibility I can share with the person who created this spreadsheet to help them make it accessible. Thank you for any help you can provide to enable me to read and edit this document. Bill For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/ For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/
