Tuesday 18 November 2014

Understanding Cell Comments - Excel 2007 - JAWS V15

Working with Cell Comments in Excel

In this post I'd like to introduce you to one of my favourite Excel features: cell comments. I've always regarded their use as an essential way of making a workbook, not only more accessible, but hugely more understandable.

Comments also have a great synergy with JAWS - you can have all of this extra helpful information without upsetting the flow of information in the worksheet itself. Sometimes, when a spreadsheet creator is trying to create more understanding, the temptation is to type any guidance directly into the cells. But doing this can make navigating data areas a more messy, tediously slow and verbose exercise. Instead of assisting someone make better sense of the data, loads of explanatory text situated in cells can disrupt the flow and make the worksheet even more confusing.

What is a Cell Comment?

Physically, a comment in Excel is a small edit area you can open - potentially one window for each cell - and type a message in. This comment edit window can then be collapsed and essentially disappears. However, the cell will "have comment" and this is physically indicated by a tiny red triangle in the top right hand corner of the cell.

Actually, a neat way to think about Excel comments is to think of them as a kind of "Post It" style note that you can attach to any cell. Stick one in a cell to remind you to do something or to supply some extra details for some additional insight.

Before we walk through comments in our worksheet though let's create a small table of data to work with. I am going to create the following data in Excel (I have included the cell references in brackets as a guide) but please feel free to improvise:

First Quarter Sales (A1)Bought (B1)Sold (C1)
Cars (A2)150 (B2) 125 (C2)
Ships (A3) 50 (B3) 40 (C3)
Trains (A4) 225 (B4)200 (C4)

Even from this small and basic table of data there are some likely targets for cell comments. For example, region title in cell A1 is ripe for a cell comment, perhaps further explaining the data itself, setting the scene, providing some to and from dates, any particular trends through the period and so on. The row headings too might benefit from cell comments, perhaps to add a bit more insight on what cars/ships/trains exactly and why. Additionally, some of the data cells might benefit, especially if some of the data is unconfirmed for example. So, as even these initial examples indicate, there is potentially a lot more hand-holding information that can be supplied and that is exactly where comments step right in!

Inserting and Reading a Cell Comment

I am going to start by putting a comment in cell A1 to accompany the title:

  1. Navigate to cell A1. (Note that in Excel you can use the Go To A Cell keystroke of CONTROL G, type in the cell you need to go to and press ENTER to go there.)
  2. With focus in cell A1, call up the applications (context) menu for the cell using the RIGHT HAND WINDOWS key or SHIFT F10 instead.
  3. ARROW UP or DOWN to the Insert Comment option and press ENTER.
  4. Focus will now move to the small comment edit window. Type in your comment as required and, when you have finished, press the ESCAPE key to move out of the comment and close it down. (Don't worry - in this case using ESCAPE will still result in your comment being saved.)
  5. Move away from the cell and back again - notice how JAWS echoes "cell has comment".
  6. Read the comment in the current cell using the JAWS keystroke of ALT SHIFT APOSTROPHE.

Editing and Deleting a Cell Comment

From time to time you may have to edit the existing cell comments and you will certainly have to delete comments too, this is how you do it:

Edit a Cell Comment

  1. Navigate to the cell containing the comment.
  2. Access the applications or context menu for the cell.
  3. Choose the Edit Comment option in the menu and press ENTER.
  4. Focus will move into the existing comment window. Adjust the text in the standard way and tap the ESCAPE key to confirm the changes and return to the worksheet area.

Delete a Cell Comment Entirely

  1. Navigate to the cell containing the comment you want to delete.
  2. Access the applications or context menu for the cell.
  3. Choose the Delete Comment option in the menu and press ENTER.
  4. Focus will return to the worksheet area - check that your comment has been deleted from the cell.

Welcome to the simple yet wonderful world of comments in Excel! Now let's cover a few of the extra bits in JAWS that really help to make cell comments such a helpful feature.

Additional JAWS Tricks

I mentioned earlier that JAWS dovetails very well with the cell comments feature. So, here are a couple of extra keystrokes to add in to the Excel cell comments mix:

How Many Comments?

When you have to explore a new worksheet, use the JAWS context Help system for information on how many comments exist:

  1. With focus in the appropriate worksheet, launch the JAWS context help system with INSERT F1.
  2. Allow the virtual cursor to speak or press the DOWN ARROW to move line by line in the Help window. Listen for the information "The worksheet contains X cells with comments".

List Cells with Comments

When you have established that the worksheet does contain a number of comments, you might find it useful to have a bit more information on each of them and even move to some of those cells directly. This is how:

  1. With the relevant worksheet in focus, press the JAWS keystroke of CONTROL SHIFT APOSTROPHE.
  2. Focus will move to a JAWS list box containing a list of all of the cell comments in the current worksheet. Notice that the cell reference and the comment is supplied.
  3. Move through the list information in the standard way with the UP and DOWN ARROW keys.
  4. To move to one of the cells with a comment, press the ENTER key on the relevant list item. The list box will close and focus will move to that cell in your worksheet.

And there we are! I hope I've managed to communicate just how sleek it is to introduce comments into your work in Excel. Not only can they help from an accessibility and ease of use perspective but they can be used to store considerably more context information for your data - without the verbosity overhead that you get when text is input directly into cells. Cell comments: know them, love them. Have fun!

Looking for more information on the JAWS screenreader? Then please visit:

www.freedomscientific.com

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