Karlen Communications Blog

With Office 2010 it is easier to recover documents if you have inadvertently closed them without saving or if the document has been damaged.

This is a long post but one I think deserves the time and space for those of us using the keyboard and/or adaptive technology such as a screen reader.

Save Settings in Word, Excel or PowerPoint Options

The first place to start is by choosing the Save settings in Word, PowerPoint or Excel. This needs to be done for each application so you can coordinate and customize the settings for each application.

For all three applications press Alt + F, T to open the Options dialog from the Backstage area under the File menu.

Press S to move to the Save category and then Tab to move into the settings for saving documents.

The following items are ones you will want to verify and select.

I suggest tabbing to the first setting since it is checked by default and using its keyboard command will uncheck it.  It is the second setting in the Save category. The keyboard command for this check box is Alt + A.

Press Tab until you come to the “Save Auto Recover information every”… setting.  This is a two part setting, the first is the check box to say yes, save an auto recovery version of my document and the second part identifies how many minutes you want between the auto saves. Once you verify that the check box to save a recovery version is checked, press Tab or Alt + M to move to the “Minutes” edit box. The default setting is to auto save your documents every 10 minutes.

I typically set auto save to every 3 or 4 minutes. While this might cause pauses in my work flow while the auto save is going on in the background, it is better than having written something brilliant that I can’t remember now and has been lost forever.

As a rule I typically save everything I’ve done that I like. If I’ve added a paragraph I save, if I’ve formatted text or created a style I save. Ctrl + S is your BFF!

The next item in the Save category settings doesn’t have a keyboard command to move to it. Once you are in the Minutes edit area press Tab to move to the check box to “Keep the last version if I close without saving.” This should be checked by default so verify that this is true.

Word Option only: The other setting you might consider in Word is the “always create backup” check box which is found under the Advanced settings in the Options dialog. The keyboard command to move to this while you are in the Advanced category settings is Alt +B. It is in the Save section of the Advanced category and is quite a way down the list of options. There is more than one setting that uses Alt + B but using this keyboard command to move from setting to setting will save you time. Once you land on the “always create backup copy” check box, press the Spacebar to check it. You can then Tab to and activate the OK button to confirm changes to the Word Options.  A backup copy of your work is saved in the same folder as the original document. All backup copies of files start with “backup of…”

We’re now ready to talk about how to get that darn document back!

Auto Recovery

The typical Recovery Pane opens to the left of your document if you’ve experienced a crash of Word, PowerPoint or Excel. “Auto recovered” versions of the documents you were working on at the time of the crash are listed and can be opened using the keyboard.

To access the Recovery Pane press Shift + F6 while a blank document is open in Word. Use the Up and Down Arrows to review the recovered documents. Press Enter on any document you want to open and save. If you don’t need these recovered versions of your documents press Tab until you land on the Close button in the Recovery Pane and press Enter. The Recovery Pane closes and you are returned to your document.

Manage Versions

There are several ways to work with versions. All of them new to Office 2010.

Manage Versions in File/Backstage Area

In the backstage area under the Info options is a button to “Manage Versions. You will find it by pressing Alt + F, letter I, R for File/Backstage, Info, Manage Versions. This opens a sub-button and if you press Enter you are taken to an unsaved files folder on your hard drive. Any unsaved files are listed in this folder. You can then select the one you want and press Enter or Alt + letter O to open it.

If you are using a screen reader you will want to press Tab to move to the Manage Versions button, and then press Tab until you hear something like “Today at 4:15…” which is the latest recovery version of a document. This won’t appear until you open the original document. This is a good place to explore how the Manage Versions is set up however there are keyboard commands to help you work more effectively with this tool.

If you know or suspect that there is a recovered version of a document you can press Alt + F, letter I, V to move to the Backstage area, Info options, Versions which then becomes a list of the versions of the document available to you. You can press Y, number 1, Y, 2 and so forth to open the corresponding document. Pressing Y and the number 1 for example will open the first document in the list.

You can also press the Up or Down Arrows to move through the versions available and then press Enter on the one you want to open.

Once you save a document with changes the recovered version disappears from this list until the next auto recover save.

Recovered Files in Recent Documents

If you press Alt + F, R, R for Backstage, Recent Documents, Recovered Files, the Open dialog appears and you are in the Unsaved Files folder. Choose the file you want to open and either press Enter or Alt + letter O to open it.

Sometimes you’ll find the documents in the Manage Versions of the Backstage area when you won’t find them in this unsaved files folder.

Open Button in Open Dialog

There is also the option to show previous versions from the Open dialog itself.

Press Ctrl + letter O, Tab to the Open button and press the Down Arrow. Choose Show previous versions by pressing the letter P until you find this option and then pressing Enter.

You are taken to the Unsaved Files folder on your hard drive where you can choose any of the listed files and open them. As with the Recovered Files from the Recent Files list, sometimes you’ll find the recovered files in the Backstage, manage Versions list rather than in this unsaved files folder.

Auto Recover “Shelf Life”

Files are saved for 4 days on your computer. After that they are deleted.

One huge caveat is that files are saved so if you are working on a computer that is not yours; make sure that there are no recovered versions of your documents on that computer. If you are working in an educational environment where the computer is “cleaned” each time it is restarted make sure you restart the computer before leaving the work station.

Also note that if you edit a document and save the document any “unsaved files” will be deleted. They are now “saved.”

Background on the Open “Split Button”

Beginning in Word 2007 when you open a document the Open button is a “split button.” This means that there are options for how you open a document.

Press Ctrl + letter O to access the Open dialog. This is a standard keyboard command.

If you select a document and press Enter or press Alt + letter O the document will open. This method does not give you access to the split button and open options.

To access the Open options, with a document selected in the list of files or typed into the filename edit area of the Open dialog, press the Tab key to move to the Open button. Then press the Down Arrow to open the Open options.

The options for opening a document are:

• Open the document, press Letter O
• Open a read only version of the document, press R
• Open as copy, press C.
• Open in browser, press B.
• Open with Transform, press T.
• Open in Protected view, press P.
• Open and repair the document, press E.
• Show previous versions of the document, press P. This is new to Word 2010.

Two of the items use the letter P to quickly choose that item. Pressing P once will take you to Protected view and pressing P again will take you to show previous versions. Press Enter on the one you want to confirm that option.

What is “Protected view?”

I called this view of a document “Preview mode” in a previous post. I didn’t want to get it confused with the tools to protect a document that prevent access by adaptive technology such as a screen reader.

Protected view is typically applied to attachments opened through or saved from Outlook or downloaded from the Internet. It lets you read the document but none of the elements that might be harmful to your computer are active. The content of documents in Protected view are accessible if you are using a screen reader.

You can’t edit the document until you turn off Protected view.

As a reminder to turn off Protected view press Alt + F, letter I, E. It will be the only option in the Info options of the File/Backstage area of Office 2010 documents until you turn it off.

What is “open with transform?”

This option lets you open an XML document with an XSLT transformation in Word. I will admit that at the moment this is too geeky for me. However I can see the need for me to investigate this as we move to more XML based documents.

Open and Repair

This is a useful tool to try if you have documents that give you a corrupt file message when you try to open them.

Press Ctrl + letter O to access the Open dialog.

Select the file you got the corrupt file message for.

Tab to the Open split button and press the Down Arrow.

Choose Open and Repair by pressing the letter R.

You will be guided through the process and hopefully your document can be opened and repaired.

This is where having a backup copy or knowing where to find information on all the recovery techniques is really useful!

Summary

We’ve all had documents that the computer ate. We now have several tools to try and get those documents back or the parts of documents we haven’t saved yet.

Other Resources on this topic from Microsoft

Recover earlier versions of a document in Office 2010. This is a mouse dependent document but might give you more information about the process.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-in/powerpoint-help/recover-earlier-versions-of-a-file-in-office-2010-HA010356735.aspx

There is a great document on the Microsoft Support site on “How to recover a lost Word document.” This is a mouse dependent document but has detailed information on techniques not commonly known.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316951

If you’ve ever created Word documents or templates and wanted to see how your Styles would look when the document had text, these two keyboard commands are ones you’ll use all the time.

Word 2007 and 2010 have keyboard commands for inserting placeholder text into a Word document.
To insert a specific number of paragraphs, each with 3 sentences type:

=rand(X)

In this case X equals the number of paragraphs you want such as 4, 7, 10 and so forth.

=rand(X, Y)

This keyboard command will insert an X number of paragraphs, 6 for example with a specific number/Y of sentences, 4 for example.

Once you type in these commands press Enter to have placeholder text form the Office Help documentation inserted into your document at the cursor point.

You can then create sample headings, lists, tables and so forth to see how your document or template will look with text/content in it.

I use these commands all the time to test a best practice, see how much text a template can hold and still retain its look and feel or to try a new feature before I use it in a document I’m working on.

For those of us who use a screen reader or who use Microsoft Word from the keyboard one of the most often asked questions is how do we find things such as highlight or specific styles in documents.

This is part one of a two part article. The follow-up to this will be finding formatted information in a tagged PDF document. I’ll use the highlighting of text in that example too.

People who are using adaptive technology such as a screen reader will need to know that specific types of formatting are in a Word document in order to find them. We don’t generally search for formatting such as highlighting unless we know it is there. We also don’t generally go through documents word by word unless we are editing our work. The accessibility of using something like highlighting is that we can find it if we know it is there.

There are two approaches to finding formatting in Word documents and both are accessible.

Create a Custom Style

The first option would be to create a specific character style. In this example I’m looking at highlighted text. For people using screen readers this might seem a problematic task. However if you create a style for highlighted text in a document someone using a screen reader will be able to skim the document just looking at that highlighted text. Since the keyboard commands are Word based rather than screen reader based, anyone using the keyboard can also use this technique.

First create your custom style for highlighted text.

1. Press Alt + H, F, Y in either Word 2007 or 2010.
2. This opens the Styles Pane to the right of your document.
3. The Normal paragraph style should be selected because that is the style in use at the cursor point.
4. Tab down to the New Style button and press Enter.
5. The New Style dialog opens.
6. Call the new style Highlighted Text. By default you are in the Style name edit area of the New Style dialog.
7. Tab to the Style type and choose “Character.”
8. The only thing we are going to change is that the text will have a yellow highlight behind it.
9. Press Alt + letter O to open the Format options for the Highlighted Text style.
10. Choose the Borders option.
11. When the Borders and Shading dialog opens move to the Shading tab by pressing Ctrl + Tab.
12. The first item in this tab is the fill option.
13. Tab to it and use the Down Arrow to open the colour palette.
14. Choose the yellow colour from the Standard Colours area of this colour palette.
15. Tab to and activate the OK button.

You can now decide whether to use this style in the current document or in documents based on this template.

Do not choose to automatically update. This often breaks the accessibility of your document and lets others revising the document add clutter to existing styles.

If focus is not on the Styles Pane press f6 until it has focus. To close the Styles Pane press Ctrl + Spacebar, C while the Styles Pane has focus.

If you’ve put the Apply Styles Pane on the Quick Access Toolbar you’ll be able to quickly move to it and type in “Highlighted Text” when you have text selected. This will apply that style to the selected text.

You can also open the Apply Styles Pane on the fly by pressing Ctrl + Shift + S.

Finding the Style in a Word Document

Now that you have the style for highlighted text created it is easy to find all instances of it in the document.

In Word 2007 press Ctrl + F to open the Find dialog.

Press Alt + M for More Options.

Once more options are displayed press Alt + letter O to open the Format options.

From the list of formatting options to find in the document choose Style.

When you activate the Styles item in the format context menu a dialog opens with all of the formatting used in the document. You can use first character navigation to press H and quickly move to “Highlight Text” which is your custom style.

The words “Highlighted Text” will appear in the Find dialog just under the edit area where you would normally type in a word or phrase to find.

Do not enter any words into the Find edit area or you will only find those words that are highlighted not highlighted text in general.

Once you find the first instance of the style Highlighted Text you can press Escape to close the Find dialog.

• Press Ctrl + Page Up to find the previous instance of Highlighted Text.
• Press Ctrl + Page Down to find the next instance of highlighted Text.

Typically Ctrl + Page Up or Page Down moves you from page to page in the document. Once you activate a Find you will keep cycling to found items. To return to using these keyboard commands to move from page to page press Ctrl + G to open the Go to dialog. Type in a page number. I usually type in the page that I am on. Go to that page by pressing enter after typing in the page number. Press Escape to close the Go to dialog. Ctrl + Page Up now moves you to the top of the previous page and Ctrl + Page Down moves you to the top of the next page.

If you are using Word 2010 there is a new Find Pane that doesn’t have the options the “old find dialog” had. You can still use the old Find dialog for this type of tasks by pressing Ctrl + G to open the Go to dialog and then pressing Ctrl + Page Down to move to the Find tab. This. Follow the steps as outlined in this article to find formatting.

These steps can also be used with the Replace dialog to replace wonky formatting in a document.

Using Highlighting

Office 2007 and 2010 have a Highlight tool from the Home Ribbon. The keyboard command to highlight selected text is Alt + H, letter I. This is a split button that is currently broken in both versions of Word. Normally the keyboard command would not open the colour palette for Highlight. However since most people use the yellow highlight this is OK. It is a bit trickier to use if you want a different colour highlight.

Now that we have the selected text in our document highlighted we can use the same Find tool as with the Highlighted Text style to find highlighted text.

This time under the Format button in the Find dialog we can choose “Highlight” from the context menu.

As with finding a style the word Highlight will appear just under the Find edit area of the Find dialog.

Don’t type in any words or you will only find those words with highlighting. We want to find all text that is highlighted.

Once you’ve found the first instance of highlighted text press the Escape key to close the find dialog and use the Ctrl + Page Up and Ctrl + Page Down to move to the previous and next occurrences of highlighted text.

If you are using Word 2010 there is a new Find Pane that doesn’t have the options the “old find dialog” had. You can still use the old Find dialog for this type of tasks by pressing Ctrl + G to open the Go to dialog and then pressing Ctrl + Page Down to move to the Find tab. This. Follow the steps as outlined in this article to find formatting

These steps can also be used with the Replace dialog to replace wonky formatting in a document.

Return Find to Default"No Formatting"

Once you’ve looked for specifically formatted text how do you remove the formatting search string from the Find dialog?

With your focus in the Find edit area press Alt + T to cycle through some options among which is the removal of the searched for formatting.

If you are using the JAWS screen reader you will need to route the JAWS cursor to the PC cursor and use the Down Arrow once to review the changes/cycling information. Use the ability to route the JAWS to the Pc cursor because you know where the PC cursor is and it is easy to just move down one line in the dialog, read the information, switch back to the Pc cursor and continue your work.

Getting Formatting Information with JAWS

If you are using the JAWS screen reader you have a few options to review formatting of text.

First at any point in the document you can press JawsKey + F to have formatting information given to you. If you’ve used the Highlight tool or a specific style for highlighting that information is given to you.

The second and more annoying method is to have the Style Changes in the JAWS verbosity settings turned on. Press JawsKey + V to open the JAWS verbosity settings for Word. Press S until you hear the option for Style change announcement. It is off by default. This will only give you style changes for the text at the cursor point. You will need to move through the text to have the style changes announced for each character or word.

The third option would be to use the sound schemes in JAWS to play a specific sound for highlighted text as you come across it.
All of these methods are dependent on the changes in formatting being at the cursor point. If you know a document has a specific style like highlighted text using the Find tool is a more efficient way of skimming through that isolated text in a Word document.