Selecting text no longer working properly in Outlook Web App on MacOS

For me, anywhere in the email web client, those hotkeys are triggered when:

• I press and release the option key
• I hold down the option key for about 2 seconds without releasing
• I continue holding down the option key for about 1 second after letting go of another button (e.g., I press option+arrow, release arrow, but continue holding down option)

In all cases, pressing the escape key removes focus from the hotkeys and returns focus to the email compose box.

Overall, this is way less inhibitive than the previous issues between April and June, but I think worth documenting as a potential bug so long as others are experiencing it (unless there are people out there who actually want this to happen when you press the option key).

These are largely the symptoms I have as well with one key difference: tapping "esc" still keeps me on the menu and doesn't return me to the compose box. I have to click with my mouse to get back to it. This is somehow even more disruptive than the previous bug.

I am really disappointed to say that in the latest days Option key issue appeared.

Really disturbing and useless while writing an email.

I wonder if we needed this... :/

Really annoying issue while writing an email of pressing Option and cursor move away from textbox to activate the upper menu... Thanks Microsoft!

Yep -- I guess the bug rollout was successful, I now have the alt problem too 😀

Either they want us all to switch to the Mac client or their QA is too easy on dev.

Here's my latest tampermonkey script to cope. Completely disables alt key propagation but things like cmd-alt-shift-V (for paste plaintext) still seem to work. Other things may not, of course.

Very quick hack, someone may have a much better way of doing this… the main problem is that e.altKey isn't set when you keyUp the altKey, so I used a workaround of a global state variable on the opt key.

Use at own risk!

// ==UserScript==
// @name           Disable Alt-key in Outlook
// @description    Stop Outlook using a held-down Alt key to bring up accessibility settings.
// @version        2024-09-19
// @run-at         document-start
// @match          https://outlook.office.com/*
 // @grant          none
// ==/UserScript==

var altKeyDownOutlookWorkaround = true;

(window.opera ? document.body : document).addEventListener('keyup', function(e) {
    if (altKeyDownOutlookWorkaround && !e.altKey) {
        altKeyDownOutlookWorkaround = false;
        e.cancelBubble = true;
        e.stopImmediatePropagation();
    }
    return false;
}, !window.opera);
(window.opera ? document.body : document).addEventListener('keydown', function(e) {
    if (e.altKey && typeof(document.activeElement.role) !== 'undefined' && document.activeElement.role == 'textbox') {
        altKeyDownOutlookWorkaround = true;
        e.cancelBubble = true;
        e.stopImmediatePropagation();
    }
    return false;
}, !window.opera);