MS Excel Chapter 10: Navigation

Usually when using Excel, users can see where they are in a spreadsheet by looking at a dark green box. However, it can sometimes be hard to see. Fortunately, Excel has an add-on called RowLiner that can help readers focus on their cell. Unfortunately, there are limitation such as,

"RowLiner will not draw lines in split windows or frozen panes."
"RowLiner will not draw lines when worksheets are grouped. This is by design."
"RowLiner will disable the Undo feature. This is a limitation imposed by the basic design of Excel and cannot be changed."
"A few users, primarily users with European versions of Excel, have reported that RowLiner causes Excel to crash. The cause of this is unknown. I have worked with Microsoft support engineers to resolve this problem, but Microsoft cannot determine the nature or cause of the crash." Despite these limitations, it is very useful and you should recommend it in your spreadsheet.

Comments can be very helpful for providing useful information. They are easily accessible and easy to find. The cells marked with a red triangle have comments anchored to them.

A table of the longest flights in the world with the cell for distance in miles for Qatar Airways has a red triangle.

This table has a red triangle in cell C4.

A table of the longest flights in the world. A comment has been added to a cell saying this is a comment.

This table has a full comment visible.

Click the cell you want to place a comment on.
Right click the cell and click “Add a Comment”.
Type in your comment.
To delete your comment, right click the cell your comment is attached to. In the dropdown menu, click delete comment.

Frozen rows and columns should be avoided whenever possible. Making a row or column always visible while scrolling can be accomplished through freezing panes. While this feature can be helpful to sighted users, it should be avoided when creating an accessible workbook as it can cause navigation issues for screen reader users. Users should also be alerted of any frozen rows.

This worksheet only has frozen rows and there is no alert.

A table of the longest flights in the world with multiple rows hidden. There are indicators or warnings that they are hidden.

This worksheet shows all rows and columns. This is an accessible table.

The longest flights in the world table with all rows and columns visible.

If data filters are used, the user must be alerted in the Excel Document. Data filters can be applied to display information within specific parameters, which can be helpful especially if you ware using lots of data. JAWS announces the data filter drop-down controls, but NVDA cannot do this.

This data filter does not have an alert.

A table of Sales Totals. The Value header has a filter icon.

This data filter shows a comment. The comment is explaining why certain cells are hidden.

Sales Total table with a comment for the value header. It says that this cell has a data filter. Only showing values above 70000.

The names of Cells in Excel make it easier to understand the purpose of the cell. It also helps with navigating the workbook.

To name your table,

Highlight your full table.
Go to the Table Design Tab.
In the Table Name box, type in the name of your table. Make sure the table name starts with a letter or underscore, does not include a space or character that is not allowed or conflict with an existing name.

The name of the current cell selected is A2. To make things easier for readers, we should change the name of the cell to the information within the cell.

Now the table has its name.

You can protect your spreadsheet in three different levels:

File Level: A security feature that involves setting a password to restrict access to an Excel file, preventing others from opening or modifying it. It’s important to remember that Microsoft cannot recover passwords if they are lost or forgotten.
Workbook Level: Safeguards the structure of a workbook by restricting actions like adding, moving, deleting, hiding, or renaming worksheets.
Worksheet Level: Helps maintain data integrity by controlling how users interact with a worksheet. For instance, it ensures that critical formulas are not accidentally altered or deleted due to unintentional actions.

To protect your sheet or workbook,

Go to the Review Tab.
In the Protect section, click Protect Sheet or Protect Workbook.
If you want to protect your worksheet, the option for selecting locked and unlocked cells needs to be checked. The effects of doing this are the same for sighted and screen reader users. Both groups will be able to do or not do the same things based on what is protected and locked. The only exception is that if you protect a worksheet and do not allow a user to select locked or unlocked cells, screen readers cannot access those cells. Fortunately, the option is checked by default so try to avoid checking it by accident.