When you import your
email accounts into the Windows 10 Mail app, your contacts are
automatically imported into the People app. So, if you want to
work with your contacts, you have to do so in the people app and
not the mail app. Think of it like this. Three apps work
together to give you that Microsoft Outlook client experience.
The People app has all of your contacts. The Mail app is where
you work with and send your email messages. The Calendar app has
all of your appointments and much more. Now, while you are in
the Windows 10 Mail app, you can switch to the Calendar app or
the People app. Many of the commands are the same as in Windows
Live Mail.
Please note: At
present when typing up an email in Mail, NVDA will not speak out
the individually typed characters in the edit fields, however
you should be able to use the arrow keys to see what the
characters were that were typed, and you can use Ctrl + left
arrow to go back a word, or Ctrl + right arrow to go forward a
word. NVDA will also read the contents in the body of the email.
The NVDA developers are currently working to fix this.
Here is the out of
date help website for using the Windows 10 mail app, in case you
want to refer to this website.
Mail for Windows 10
supports most types of email services. You can add any of
these Microsoft accounts: Exchange,
Office 365, Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live.com, and MSN.com. You can also add any
of these accounts: Gmail, Yahoo Mail, iCloud, or an account with
a POP or IMAP server.
The first part of this
tutorial can be done with all four screen readers: NVDA, JAWS,
Narrator, and Window Eyes.
So, let us consider
how you can launch the Mail app for the first time. The way I
did it, was to press the Windows key and type Mail. I heard
something like: Windows Mail app trusted Windows store app or
something close to that. Now, press Enter, and the Mail app will
open. There you go, you have launched the Mail app for the first
time. The first time you open Mail, you'll land on the Welcome
screen. Press Enter to select Get Started. Now, close the Mail
app, and let us pin three apps on the task bar.
Another way you can
launch the Mail app, is to press the Windows key, and tab to and
arrow to All Apps, and open that to show all apps on your
computer. Just type the letter M until you get to the Mail app
and press Enter. Now, you will use the People and Calendar apps
along with the Mail app very often, so let us pin all three apps
to the taskbar. I will also tell you how to add them as
shortcuts to your desktop as well if you would like to do that.
To add them to the taskbar, just type the name of each app in
the search edit box, and press the applications key or Shift +
F10 and arrow down to pin to taskbar, and press Enter. Do this
for the Mail, Calendar, and the People app. There you go, you
should have those three apps on the taskbar. You can also find
all three apps in the all apps, and do the same thing to pin
them to the taskbar.
Here is how you create
a shortcut on your desktop for all three apps. You could put
just the Mail app on your desktop or however you want to do it.
First, press Windows + R to open the run dialog. Type
shell:appsfolder and press Enter. Do not space between words in
that phrase you type into the run dialog box. A list of all apps
will come up, most of them will be the Win 10 apps. When you get
to one of the apps, press the applications key (or Shift + F10
keys), and arrow down to create the shortcut. You will hear
something like: You cannot create a shortcut here, do you want
to put it on the desktop instead? Press Enter, and a shortcut
will be placed on the desktop. This is how you add a shortcut
for any of the Win 10 apps to your desktop. Wow, now you have
the apps pinned to the taskbar, and also they are on your
desktop. Finally, let us begin to learn how to use these three
apps.
Here are a few
commands to use with the Mail app. Tab key: The tab key
will get you anywhere you need to go in the mail app. Also, F6 will take you to
different sections of the app. You do not ever need to use the
touch cursor to use the mail app. These three apps, Mail,
People, and Calendar have been made so accessible, that you can
use the PC cursor. When a message is opened with a screen
reader, you are put in a virtual viewer so you can use the
virtual cursor, just like in a web page. In NVDA, this will open
into browse mode so you can read your message. If you choose to
create a new message, reply to or forward an existing message,
you will then be put into focus mode in NVDA. This is where you
can type in or add in some new information. Now, to work with
messages: to send
your message, press Alt
+ S. To reply
to a message, press Ctrl
+ R. To forward
a message, press Ctrl +
F. To create a new
message, press Ctrl
+N. Those key commands and the Tab and F6, is about all
you need to know to navigate the Mail app.
Now, let us work with
the Mail app. Open the Mail app, and you will be on the list of
inbox messages for your Microsoft (MS) account. If you have an
MS account, that account (and its email, contacts, messages, and
calendar info) will already be imported into the mail app, and
you can work with all messages in that MS account. Remember, to
work with those contacts, you will have to open the People app
as well. Now, let us import all of your other email accounts
into the Mail app. If you use another client, this will not
affect your other clients at all. If these are all IMAP
accounts, the Mail app and your other clients will be synced so
you can open and work with your messages in any client or the
Mail app on any device.
Now, let us add our
first account. From the list of messages for your MS account, tab to manage accounts and
press Enter. Next, tab to the Add account button.
You will be in a list of account types you can add. In the Choose an account dialog,
use the Down Arrow key
to go through the list of account types (Outlook.com, Exchange,
Google, Yahoo Mail, and so on). When you hear the name of your
account type, press
Enter. For example, if you want to add a Gmail account,
press enter on Google. Next, enter the email address
for the account that you want to add. Now, tab to the password
box, and enter your
password. Lastly, Press the Tab key to move to the
Sign in button and
press Enter and then
press Enter again on
the done button.
Now, if it does not work to import an account by choosing Google, for example,
any account will import into this choice: Go to the account choice other
account, IMAP or POP. No matter what account you are
trying to import, just enter
the email address and password for that account, and you
should be able to import the account.
The last account
choice, is the advanced
account. Enter on this last choice if you need to enter in
all of the settings for an account by hand. This is the choice
you would use to import your Internet Service provider account.
After you add your accounts, notice in the manage accounts, you
will see a choice to link accounts. This means, that you could
have all messages from all of your accounts go into one inbox. I
would not do this. Each
account should have its own inbox. Now, let us press Enter
on one of the accounts that you just added and see what happens.
If you press Enter on one of your accounts, there is a choice to
delete the account if you decide you do not want it in the mail
app anymore. Also, if you press Enter on the sync settings, you
will see that your emails from three months ago will import. You
can change this if you want. Also, you can change some settings
of how the emails are synced in the Mail app, but I would not
mess with that at all. Now, just press Escape to get out of
that, and you will be back in your list of accounts. Press Esc
to close the manage accounts pane. The cursor moves to the Inbox
pane for the account you last entered on and your messages,
contacts, and calendar info will all be imported.
Now, just keep opening
manage accounts and go
to add account to keep adding or importing new accounts.
Now, let us look at
the settings in the Mail app. There are some settings that you
might want to change or work with in these settings groups. So,
Tab to settings and press Enter. The two groups of settings you
should open are the reading
and signature settings. Do not mess with the other groups
of settings.
The reading settings have
two choices you might want to change. You can check or uncheck
caret browsing. With NVDA, you have to have caret browsing
turned on to read the message. However, instead of checking this
to always have caret browsing on, you can toggle the caret browsing
on and off with F7. I would leave this caret browsing
turned off in the reading settings group. Now, in this reading
group, there is also a button that turns on and off conversation
view. If the button is checked, messages will be grouped by
conversation in your inbox. I would uncheck this so it just says
conversation view button. This way, you will get each message
individually in the list of messages. However, if you want your
messages to show up as conversations, then have that button say
conversations view checked.
Press Enter to close
the reading group, and Tab to signature and press
Enter. In here, you can add a signature, or check all accounts
to have the same signature work for all accounts. If you check
to have a signature and tab, there is a signature that is there
by default. It is the sent from mail for Windows 10 that appears
at the end of each message. You can uncheck the signature, and
that will not appear after each message. If you want to create
your own signature, check the signature, and overwrite that
default signature (to add your own signature you want to appear
after every message that you send). You can have different
signatures for each account, or have the same signature for all
accounts by checking all accounts. Press Escape to get out of
settings. That is pretty much all I would worry about in
settings.
Now, we can start
working with our email messages for whichever account you pick
from the list of accounts. All the accounts will be in a
vertical list, and you just press Enter on whichever account you
want to work with, and you will be placed in the inbox and the
messages will load. Up to this point, all screen readers have
worked the same. From
this point on, there will be some differences depending on
which screen reader you work with. I will point out these
differences for all three screen readers minus Window Eyes,
because I have never used that screen reader.
Here we go LOL!!!!!!!
Let us arrow through the messages in the inbox and read some of
our messages. Let us say we are using JAWS or Narrator at this
point. Just enter on the message you want to open. Now, with
JAWS, you are put in a virtual environment just like on the net.
The virtual PC cursor, allows you to select and copy info that
is right in the message. If you are done, just press Escape to
get out of the message and back to the list of messages. With
Narrator, you can arrow through the message, but it is not as
easy to select and copy, so let us just do that with JAWS. Now,
with NVDA, press F7 in the message to turn on caret browsing to
arrow through the message. This is a toggle, so you can press F7
again to turn it off. When you turn on caret browsing in a
message, you will have an insertion caret follow along as you
read and type, just like in a Word document. This is the only
way you can read a message with NVDA. Now, let me give you some
key commands right here. Tab gets you anywhere in the Mail app
you want to be. Tabbing will get you to the list of your
accounts, list of folders in that account, and so on. When you
get to the list of folders, press the more button to open up all
folders, like the sent folder, for example.
If you Shift Tab once
from the list of folders, you can press the folder button, and
tab to new folder. Press Enter on the new folder button. You
will be in an edit box right away. Type the name of the folder
you want to create, and press Enter. Tab to Create new folder
button and press Enter on that, and there you go! You have
created a new folder for the account you are working in. To
create a sub folder, press the more button in the list of
folders, and arrow to which folder you want to create the sub
folder for. Next, press the applications key or Shift + F10, and
arrow to create sub folder and press Enter. Now, you can type
the name of the sub folder you want, and press Enter. That is
how you create a sub folder of a folder that is already there.
When you are on a message in the list, you can press the
applications key or Shift + F10 and get choices of what you can
do with that message. One of these choices is move. If you enter
on move, you will get a list of folders you can move that
message to. I created a folder called saved messages. So when I
want to save a message, I just move the message to my saved
messages folder. If you press Delete, the message goes in the
trash folder.
To send a message,
press Ctrl + N. You are put in the To: edit box. Just type in
the email, tab to subject, and tab to write your message. To
send a message, press Alt + S, and you are back on the list of
messages in your inbox. After you open a message and read it,
you can reply to it by pressing Ctrl + R. Just type your
message, and press Alt + S to send your reply. You will be in
the list of messages, and just press the Delete key to delete
that message. To forward a message, just press Ctrl + F.
Here we go with the
ribbon. When you are in a message, three tabs show up on the
ribbon. Just press the Alt
key to get to the ribbon. The first tab you will hear is the
format tab. Right arrow to the Insert tab, and right
arrow again to the third and last tab, the options tab. Now, if
you press Alt a
second time while you are still in the Mail app, you will be on
the tab that you were last working with. If you were working
with the options tab lastly, the options tab will show up, and
you will have to left arrow to get back to insert and format.
You do wrap around in a circle with a couple of other choices in
there as you wrap. On any of these tabs, just press the down
arrow key to get to all of the choices for that tab. Then, press
tab to tab through all of the choices.
For example, to insert
an attachment into an email, press the Alt key, and arrow to the
Insert tab. Then, press the down arrow, and you are right on the
files choice. It will not say attach, this is very important.
Pressing down arrow on the Insert tab, allows you to insert
different things into your email. You want to press Enter on
files to attach a file or attachment to your email. Other
choices are table, link, and so on. These are different things
that you can insert in your email. Press Enter on files, and you
can browse your computer to find a file to insert or attach, and
press Enter on the open button. Now, you are put back on the
message you are composing. If you press Shift + tab one time,
you will be on your file that you attached to your email. That
is how people will find your attachments. They will just shift
tab to hear all of the files you inserted or attached to your
email. Now, Use Shift + Tab again to move focus to the subject
line, and press Shift + Tab again to hear the sender’s name. In
other words, when you are in a message, press Shift + tab to
hear all of the information like the subject, the sender, the
time and date, and so on.
There are not key
commands to read this information to you like in other clients.
When you finish reading the message, press the Esc key to return
to the message list. That is the key. If you just press Escape,
you go back to your list of messages. If you press Delete on a
message in the list, it goes to the trash folder right away.
Now, if you select some text in your email, just press Alt, and
arrow to the Format tab, and press down arrow to the format
choices if you want to format your email. Just Tab through the
choices. There are many, you can do just about anything here to
format your email text. For example, if you down arrow on the
format tab, there will be choices to bold, underline, and to do
other things to the text that you select in your email that you
are composing. Now, for the options tab, the third and last tab
if you are composing a message, press the Alt key and arrow to
the options tab and press down arrow and tab through these
choices.
The most important
choice is spelling. If you press Enter on spelling, that will
begin a spell check just like in MS word. You will hear the
mispelled word, and you can arrow to choices and all of that and
press Enter on the right choice for the spelling. The Mail app
will take you word by word, and it will tell you the spell
checking is done. You have to press Enter on the done button or
whatever it is to go back to your message. That is the only
choice under the options tab that you will want to use. Now,
here is the thing about spell checking in the mail app. You can
go to settings by pressing Windows + I to have win10 correct
much of your spelling as you type. This only works though, in a
Win 10 app. The Mail app qualifies for that. So, in settings,
arrow to the devices group and press Enter. Then, go to the type
choice and press Enter. Check two check boxes. The first says
something like correct spelling, and the second one says
something like highlight words that are misspelled. Check those
two check boxes and press Enter. Now, when you are in the Mail
app, most of the words will be automatically corrected as you
type them. However, this feature will not correct all misspelled
words. This is where you press Alt, arrow to the options tab and
down arrow, and tab to the spell check choice to really spell
check the email just like in Word. Now, I do not think there is
a way to have the Mail app spell check every message
automatically when you send it (like with WLM). I think that you
have to spell check every message that you compose, before you
send it, just like with each document in Word.
Well, I think we have
covered everything with the Mail app itself. Now, I will show
you quickly how to use the People app and Calendar app, and then
you can use all three apps together as one email client.
Launch the People app,
and tab a few times. You will tab by a new button, where you can
manually enter the information for a new contact. If you tab
past the new button, you will come to a list of contacts. You
cannot use first letter navigation to jump to a certain contact,
but here is what you can do. Tab one more time, and you will be
in a list of letters of the alphabet. Again, you cannot use
first letter navigation, like you can now use in the all apps.
Just arrow down to the letter you want, and Shift + Tab back to
the list of contacts starting with that letter. Find the name
you want, and tab a few more times. There will be an edit where
you can edit the contact's information. Tab past that, and you
will come to profile. Tab one more time, and you will be on
their email. To copy that email, you have to press the
applications key, or Shift + F10, and press Enter on copy. You
will then have that person's email copied to the clipboard. You
can go to the Mail app, and paste that into the To: edit box to
send them an email. That is it with the People app. Remember
that your contacts are imported into the People app. As you type
an email into the Mail app, the populated choices come from the
People app.
Launch the Calendar
app, and press Alt + Ctrl + 4 to get into month view. You are
put on a grid of days of the week. You will land on today. It
will say the date as well. For example, you will hear Friday,
October 28. You also hear how many events are linked with that
day, like birthdays of your contacts and so on. Tab to each
event, and press Enter on the event to get the details of that
event. If you press Shift + Tab you will go back to the day of
those events. If you press right and left arrow, you will go
forward a day or back a day. Up arrow takes you a week ahead
from that day, and down arrow takes you a week before that day.
If you want to schedule an event for a certain day, just press
Enter on that day, and a dialog will come up for you to enter
all of the information for the appointment or event, and there
is an okay or done button. There you go! That is how you read
days, the events for those days, and how to schedule an event
for that day. That is about it for the Calendar app.
Account Manual Sync
(Send and retrieve new mail)
Ctrl + M or F9
Mark
as
read
Ctrl + Q
Mark
as
unread
Ctrl + U
Toggle
the
important property in a conversation
Ctrl + Shift + G
Delete
a
conversation
Ctrl + D or Delete
Archive
a
conversation
Backspace
Reply
to
current mail
Ctrl + R
Reply
all
Ctrl + Shift + R
Forward
current
mail
Ctrl + F
Search
Ctrl + E or F3
Create
a
new email
Ctrl + N or Ctrl +
Shift + M
Add
Attachment
Alt + I
Send
mail
Alt + S or Ctrl +
Enter
Switch
to
Inbox
Ctrl + Shift + I
Switch
to
Outbox
Ctrl + Shift + O
Zoom
in
Ctrl + + (Plus key on
numpad)
Zoom
out
Ctrl + - (Minus key on
numpad)
Move
between
regions
F6
Toggle
Caret
Browsing
F7
Accept
Meeting
Invitation
Alt + C
Decline
Meeting
Invitation
Alt + D
Tentative
Meeting
Invitation
Alt + N
Move
to
View
Ctrl + Shift + V
Switch
to
the calendar in the mail app
Ctrl + 2
For the People app, the Tab
and arrow keys are
about all you need.
Well, I hope you get
so much good out of this post, and you can get a lot out of
using the Mail app, People, and Calendar apps. You can do a lot
with three apps. I would pin all three of them to the taskbar,
and have them all opened at the same time.
Take care, David Moore