OFF95: First Character Doesn't Select Tab in New Dialog Box (130048)

SYMPTOMS

In the New dialog box in Microsoft Office, Word, or Microsoft Excel, you cannot select a specific tab in the New dialog box by pressing the key on the keyboard that corresponds to the first character in the tab name (while a tab name is selected).

CAUSE

This behavior occurs because the tabs that are available in the New dialog box depend on the folders available in the Templates folder in the Microsoft Office folder. You can create additional folders (for your Microsoft Office templates) that appear as tabs in the New dialog box. Because there may be multiple tabs that start with the same letter, the first character in a tab name in the New dialog box is not a reliable way of selecting the tab.

Note that in tabbed dialog boxes in Microsoft Windows 95, you are not able to select tabs by pressing the first letter in the tab name (while a tab name is selected). However, in some of the tabbed dialog boxes in Microsoft Excel and Word, you can select a tab by pressing a key on the keyboard. For example, in the Font dialog box in Word, each of the tabs has an accelerator key (an underlined character). To select a tab in this dialog box, while a tab name is active, you can press the accelerator key for that tab, such as R for Character Spacing.

In Microsoft Excel, while a tab name is active in the Format Cells dialog box, you can press the first letter in the tab name to select that tab in the dialog box. For example, you can press F to select the Font tab.

WORKAROUND

To select a tab in the New dialog box in Microsoft Excel, Word, or Office, press TAB until one of the tab names is selected, and then press CTRL+TAB to select the desired tab.

Note that this key combination works to select a tab in any tabbed dialog box in Microsoft Windows.