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
    2024-10-02T01:54:27+00:00

    I will never want that behavior. It should be possible to turn off.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-10-01T23:23:16+00:00

    This is killing me too. One person said, "A couple times an hour" this interferes. I seem to be suffering through this several times AN EMAIL. I'm not sure why this wasn't tested. The option key is very important for quick navigation in macOS, just like the CTRL key is in Windows.

    Please tell us how we can turn this off.

    To reiterate... When holding down the Option key to navigate words quickly, Outlook interrupts your movement by putting unwanted shortcut letters underneath the Menu Options at the top of the screen (within Outlook, not Chrome/Web Browser Menus). To make things worse, you can't navigate out of this with just the keyboard. You have to stop what you're doing, grab the mouse, and click back into your email for the menu to disappear.

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-11-15T20:01:59+00:00

    Adding myself to the list of p*ssed off users. Come on Microsoft! You do everything possible to frustrate Mac users, and it's anticompetitive. This menu trick takes over core Mac OS keyboard functionality to implement a gimmick. No one wants this menu "feature" anyway, but you definitely can't be stealing core UI patterns from the Mac to implement it!

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  4. 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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  5. Anonymous
    2024-10-01T01:51:50+00:00

    Quick note to say that I'm experiencing this same regression as Ivan and Josh.

    Pressing the option key triggers the menu navigation, even if it's just to navigate between words. E.g., Option+Right to skip to the next word when writing emails.

    There is an option at "Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Turn Off Keyboard Shortcuts"... but problem still persists.

    Below keywords for search/discoverability:

    outlook.com safari browser option key triggers menu navigation

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