Outlook web interface on a Mac: weird Option key behaviour

Anonymous
2024-09-16T19:22:17+00:00

Hi all,

I've suffered a new setback in my ongoing battle with Outlook's web interface.

As of the last week or two only, when I have Outlook open in my browser (Chrome on my Mac) and I press the option key, it seems to initiate some sort of keyboard navigation thing where it shows letters under Home, View, etc. that I can press to navigate those menus via the keyboard.

So my question is: How do I get rid of this behaviour?

I use option + delete and fn + option + delete very often while typing to delete word-by-word, and a couple times an hour now I accidentally tap just the option key which suddenly jumps into this navigation thing and stops my keyboard inputs in the message I'm typing until I hit escape to go back to normal.

This amounts to a not insubstantial hit to my email productivity.

Thanks in advance!

Outlook | MacOS | New Outlook for Mac | For education

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-10-13T17:05:07+00:00

    I may have found a work around.

    When you pop out the message into a new modal window, the option key works as expected and we are spared the annoying behaviour.

    Try it out.

    thanks

    anand

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-10-10T22:07:53+00:00

    Any press-and-release of the option key alone will trigger it, no matter how short.

    The issue is that if you're used to the Mac way of using the option key to navigate around and highly text quickly, as many of us Mac users are, we're constantly hitting the option key with arrows when editing any text. While you do that you're bound to accidentally hit option on its own every so often. Normally we don't notice this because it's Mac-wide standard behaviour for the Option key not to do anything on its own, in the same way that it's Windows-wide standard behaviour for Alt and Ctrl to do nothing on their own.

    It's just a very stupid choice of keyboard behaviour, because it alters a system-wide standard that all other websites and applications adhere to.

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-10-09T17:46:58+00:00

    I can't tell you how happy and yet sad I was to find this thread. I use option to navigate between & highlight words instinctively at this point and it's throwing off my email productivity massively. Outlook web + Firefox. Please, Microsoft, put in a switch to disable this behavior!!

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-10-05T08:42:04+00:00

    I think time too has a role to play. I see this beahviour when the option key has been pressed for a longer period of time. For a quick navigation to the word on the left or right it seems to work ok without triggering the menu. However justa. wee bit longer and you have the dreaded loss of focus and going to the header.

    MSFT should let the editor window alone. The mac outlook app is disfunctional. You are making the place of last refuge also unacceptable.

    thanks

    anand

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-10-03T16:19:44+00:00

    Has anybody had any luck figuring out how to resolve this issue? I too am beyond frustrated these past few weeks with this having started to happen. Here's a screenshot (for posterity) of what happens when trying to use the option key:

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