F11 disabled in Excel by speech History

[cearbhall o'meadhra]

Hi folds,

 

I was shocked to find that my new Excel workbook came with only one empty sheet instead of the usual three sheets.

 

As soon as I hit shift+F11 to create a new sheet, I was alarmed to find that nothing happened. I contacted Microsoft help desk, but we could find nothing wrong. Then, by chance, I googled “Shift and F11 with NVDA” and was rewarded with the clear and stark declaration that the shortcut, NVDA+shift+F11, is used to work within the new Speech History add-on!

 

I like this add-on and now I will have to choose whether to remove Speech History or carry on with the alternative key sequence: alt, H, I, s to create a new worksheet.

 

A pity that the notes about Speech History failed to warn of the conflict with the popular and much-used Excel and its shortcut shift+F11. Did the inventors of Speech History take account of the fact that they were disabling this essential shortcut for Office users?

 

 

All the best,

 

Cearbhall

 

M: +353 (0) 833323487; E: cearbhall...@blbc.ie

 

[Edward Green]

Hi Cearbhall,

 

You can always change the speech history hotkey in NVDA Preferences/Input gestures.

 

Cheers,

 

Ed

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[Mujtaba Merchant]

Interesting I always used ALT H I S to insert a sheet in Excel 

Sincerely,

 

Mujtaba Merchant

Bangalore | INDIA

Sent from iPhone ®

 

 

On 25 Oct 2025, at 6:28 PM, cearbhall o'meadhra <cearbhall...@blbc.ie> wrote:



--

[Gene Asner]

You don't have to get rid of the add-on. There are various ways of
dealing with the problem. One is to use the pass next key through
command. It is NVDA key f 2. Execute that command, then execute the
program command shift f11. The pass next key through command allows the
next command to go to the program or to windows, wherever it would go if
you weren't using NVDA. There are other things you can do, change the
command speech history uses, at least I assume you can, but I won't go
into those, since the command I've given is easy to use and only
requires one additional command.

Gene

> <mailto:cearbhall...@blbc.ie>

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[FARHAN ISHRAK Fahim]

You can also sleep nvda by pressing nvda key + shift + s. Then, your program will accept your shortcut and nvda won't intercept between to perform nvda action instead of program specific action.

[cearbhall o'meadhra]

Thanks, Jene,

That worked in creating a sheet.
Curiously, alt, h, I,s creates a new sheet and NVDA announces its Sheet number immediately. However, when I press NVDA+F2 I hear "pass key through", which is encouraging. Then, when I press shift+F11, I hear absolutely nothing even though the new sheet has indeed been created!

Can you explain why this is?

All the best,

Cearbhall

M: +353 (0) 833323487; E: cearbhall...@blbc.ie

-----Original Message-----
From: nvda-...@nvaccess.org <nvda-...@nvaccess.org> On Behalf Of Gene Asner
Sent: Saturday, October 25, 2025 6:49 PM
To: nvda-...@nvaccess.org
Subject: Re: [NVDA] F11 disabled in Excel by speech History

You don't have to get rid of the add-on. There are various ways of dealing with the problem. One is to use the pass next key through command. It is NVDA key f 2. Execute that command, then execute the program command shift f11. The pass next key through command allows the next command to go to the program or to windows, wherever it would go if you weren't using NVDA. There are other things you can do, change the command speech history uses, at least I assume you can, but I won't go into those, since the command I've given is easy to use and only requires one additional command.

Gene

On 10/25/2025 7:58 AM, cearbhall o'meadhra wrote:
> Hi folds,
>
> I was shocked to find that my new Excel workbook came with only one
> empty sheet instead of the usual three sheets.
>
> As soon as I hit shift+F11 to create a new sheet, I was alarmed to
> find that nothing happened. I contacted Microsoft help desk, but we
> could find nothing wrong. Then, by chance, I googled “Shift and F11 with NVDA”
> and was rewarded with the clear and stark declaration that the
> shortcut,
> NVDA+shift+F11, is used to work within the new Speech History add-on!
>
> I like this add-on and now I will have to choose whether to remove
> Speech History or carry on with the alternative key sequence: alt, H,
> I, s to create a new worksheet.
>
> A pity that the notes about Speech History failed to warn of the
> conflict with the popular and much-used Excel and its shortcut
> shift+F11. Did the inventors of Speech History take account of the

> shift+fact

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[Gene Asner]

I don't use the program and I don't know what you hear if the add-on is
disabled. You can diswable it if you want to find out. Go to the
add-on in the store, open the context menu and disable it. After you
press enter on disable, press escape. A dialog will come up asking if
you want to restart NVDA. Press space and it will restart with the
add-on disabled.

Gene

[muhammed ali çiçek]

Hello.
I use the add-on. My advice is to change the shortcut for the NVDA Input Gestures, in the Speech category.
I was experiencing an issue where when I pressed the F12 key to open the Developer Tools in CHRome, it was copying the last spoken thing.
In NVDA, it's faster to assign the shortcut once in Input Gestures instead of pressing two shortcut keys repeatedly.
Regards.

Gene Asner <gsa...@gmail.com>, 25 Eki 2025 Cmt, 20:49 tarihinde şunu yazdı:

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[Oriol Gómez]

Hi,

Yes. We need to keep in mind that the keyboard is limited and not everyone uses the same software, so in the end it comes down to user choice what keyboard shortcuts they need and which they can use.

For example, I disabled a lot of the basic reading commands like insert + 2 to read characters, insert + 3 to read words, insert 5 to read  dynamic content, etc. That way I have reassigned them to other global plugins or whatever that I use more often.

I hope this helps.

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[Quentin Christensen]

Hi Cearbhall,

Re why NVDA does not report anything when you use the pass through command - it is because when you press NVDA+F2, NVDA ignores the next command AND whatever it does.

Probably the best option for you, is to change the NVDA+shift+f11 keystroke in the speech history add-on.

Kind regards

Quentin

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[cearbhall o'meadhra]

Thanks, Quentin,

 

By the way, I was delighted to hear that you will be addressing the seminar on NVDA in Ireland next Tuesday.

 

All the best,

 

Cearbhall

 

M: +353 (0) 833323487; E: cearbhall...@blbc.ie

 

From: Quentin Christensen <que...@nvaccess.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2025 9:24 PM
To: nvda-...@nvaccess.org
Subject: Re: [NVDA] F11 disabled in Excel by speech History

 

Hi Cearbhall,

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/nvaccess.org/d/msgid/nvda-users/CAKsDpFjt-y7kgSB%3DwyptipJFxkbpaCjGmxMzkrD-acR46Bc6Tg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Quentin Christensen]

You're welcome - and yes, it should be a good session - I have it tomorrow in my calendar (in about 26 hours from now as I write this :)

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