The Alt-underscored letter feature doesn't work in the navigation pane.

[BudV]

OL2003 under WinXP Home SP3.

If I'm not mistaken, Bill has told us we can run (most of) Windows without a
mouse, by taking advantage of menus' underscored letters and the Alt key.

I can't make it work in the navigation pane. When I have a menu showing, it
disappears as soon as I tap the Alt key, before I can tap the underscored
letter.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

If you tab the Alt key once, it will highlight the menu. After that, you'll
only have to type the underscored letters and no longer hold/press tab.

 

[BudV]

Sorry, but I found your reply confusing.

"If you tab the Alt key once, it will highlight the menu." Tab-Alt does
nothing, and Alt-Tab, of course switches windows. If you meant "Tap", which
is the term I used, then tapping the Alt key does nothing.

"...you'll only have to type the underscored letters and no longer
hold/press tab." This gave me some hope that I could execute a series of
functions without losing the menu. That would be great, Unfortunately,
nothing I tried made that happen.

You did bring me closer, though. The only interpretation that did anything
for me was the following:

Right-click the entry (Opens the menu.)
Tap the Tab key once (Locks the menu open for a *single* use.)
Tap the appropriate underscored letter (Executes the function and closes the
menu.)

If you can improve on that, please enlighten me.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Sorry, I meant "tap" indeed; I'm not a native so forgive me if my English is
not 100%.

When you press the Alt button on your keyboard, it will highlight "File".
You can then press the down arrow on your keyboard to open the File menu or
press "f" on your keyboard. You can also press right to select Edit or
simply press "e". With a menu open, you can press the underlined letter
within that menu to select that option.

So for instance the keyboard sequence ALT, H, A opens the About dialog when
you are in the main Outlook window.

 

[BudV]

No problem. I thought that might be the case. For all the help you
provide, I can put up with a little broken English.

Your original response (with the typo corrected) and your second response
below deal with accessing the toolbar at the top of the screen using the Alt
key, and I'm familiar with that.

My original question, however, dealt specifically with the Mail Navigation
Pane, which does not seem to react to the Alt key the way the rest of
Windows does. It appears that you can't use the Alt key at all in the
Navigation Pane. Just right-click the entry and tap the letter-command, but
you only get one chance. (Note that this is a modification to the procedure
I suggested in my first reply -- the Tab key step is unnecessary.) It would
be nice, for example, if I could repeat the "Move up/down in list" commands
when manipulating the favorites pane.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Correct, that is how context menu's work (they close when executing a
command) and you don't have to use the ALT key for that.

Note that many keyboards come with a context menu button on it. Usually they
are located on the left of your right CTRL button. This would be the same as
right clicking on the active location in a window.

You can use the F6 button to cycle to the various panes of Outlook. This
will allow you to access the Favorite Folder pane without a mouse.