Pull-down Menu Command Keys in MS Office?

[mashuganah]

The ONLY thing I miss in MS Office Mac from Windoze is the ability to
use key commands to open pull-down menus. Is there a way to get this
functionality in the Mac version of MS Office?

 

[Clive Huggan]

Dear whoever,

I'm only expert in Word, so someone may contradict me re Excel etc.

The Mac OS has never had this functionality; it's one of the things I really
miss (I've been mainly-Mac-but-a-bit-of-Windows for years).

This may be one reason why there is a significantly higher proportion of Mac
users of Word than PC users who customize Word through keystrokes and
self-made toolbars (i.e., we can't pull down those menus, so we automate the
next step down -- though it also reflects the demographic using PC/Mac
platforms). Virtually all the intensive Mac Word users I know hardly ever
use the menus; and most of them don't even use the Formatting palette.

My personal approach on such configuration (which reflects most of the views
of the MVPs on this and the microsoft.public.mac.office.word newsgroup) is
reflected throughout some notes on the way I use Word for the Mac, titled
"Bend Word to Your Will", which are available as a free download from the
Word MVPs' website (http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/Bend/BendWord.htm).

[Note: The document is designed to be used electronically and most subjects
are self-contained dictionary-style entries. Be sure to read the front end
so you can use the document to best advantage and select the right settings
for reading it.]

But that only has potential to work-around in Word, and maybe you are more
into Excel etc ... :-\

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is at least 7 hours different from the US and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
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[JE McGimpsey]

The ONLY thing I miss in MS Office Mac from Windoze is the ability to
use key commands to open pull-down menus. Is there a way to get this
functionality in the Mac version of MS Office?

You can get something similar, though more clunky, using the System
universal accessibility settings. Open the

System Preferences/Keyboard and Mouse/Keyboard Shortcuts

dialog, and make sure that the Keyboard Navigation items are checked
(type CTRL-F1 to toggle keyboard access settings).

You can then type CTRL-F2 to focus on the Menu and use the right/left
arrow keys to navigate to the desired menu. Once the desired menu is
shown, you can use a letter key to access the command.

It's generally a lot easier to assign the command its own dedicated
shortcut. And of course that's even simpler than using Alt-F1 plus
another key.