Excel: Report hidden cells

[Qchristensen]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

In Excel, it is possible to hide columns or rows, so they still exist, but aren't visible, however it is very hard to find these with NVDA:

1) In an open worksheet, press shift+spacebar to select the current row, or control+spacebar to select the current column. 2) Press the applications key to open the context menu. 3) Press H to hide the selected row or column. 4) Navigate around the worksheet

With column C hidden, for instance, as you press right arrow from A1, NVDA reads B1, D1, E1, etc, without any indication of why it skipped C1.

To Unhide the hidden cells, select around it (the row above and below the hidden one, or columns either side of it), open the context menu and press U to unhide.

Describe the solution you'd like

A user initially reported this as information other screen readers provide, so they may have other suggestions (I am not familiar with how other screen readers handle this). Offhand, one suggestion which comes to mind:

As you navigate around the worksheet, report as you are coming up to a hidden row / column, and as you skip it. For instance, with column C hidden, and pressing right arrow as per the previous example, NVDA would report: "B1, Next column hidden", "D1, skipped hidden column C". I would envisage that while you were in say column B, it would announce it initially, but if you then press down arrow, it would NOT announce it again (just as it announces column headers when you move into that column, but not while moving within that column). The same for as you move into, over or alongside a hidden row.

Describe alternatives you've considered

I'm not sure if anyone would NOT want this information reported, but theoretically an option in the table section of document formatting could handle that situation if desired.

Additional context

Tested with: NVDA 2024.3 RC1 Windows 11 (64-bit) Version: 23H2, Build: 22631.3958 Office 365 (64-bit) Version: 16.0.17830.20138

Although I don't believe anything has changed either way in terms of support.

[Qchristensen]

Note: Initially reported via Mastodon: https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issues/16997

[XLTechie]

I use Excel, but not regularly, so perhaps this is obvious.

Other than a hidden column C, what other reason(s) could there be, for moving right from B1 and ending up in D1?

[Qchristensen]

You might be unsure if you'd accidentally pressed right arrow or tab twice.

You can also use control+arrows to jump to the next block of cells (if columns a, b, c and g, h, i all had data and you press control+right arrow you will go from a to c to g to i) - yes you could skip hidden cells with that but that's perhaps a separate case we can look at later.

[SaschaCowley]

We believe the best UX here would be to announce when hidden rows or columns have been skipped, after announcing the coordinates. For instance, say column F is hidden,:

• NVDA speaks "E1"
• User hits right arrow
• NVDA speaks "G1, skipped hidden column"

This should be configurable so that users can turn off this more verbose behaviour.

@Qchristensen what do you think?

[Qchristensen]

I think that UX sounds good.