MS Word: the default UI automation setting makes many NVDA's selection key strokes silent

[amirsol81]

Please take a look at the attached Word document. With the UI automation setting for MS Word in the Advanced pain of the settings dialog set to Default (Where necessary), NVDA remains silent after a short while as many selection/de-selection-related key strokes are pressed.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Make sure your UI Automation for Word in the Advanced pain of NVDA's Settings is set to Default (Where necessary. Also - preferably - make sure you're using the Web view in MS Word though this doesn't mostly matter.
2. Open the attached MS Word (DOCX) document.
3. Press Up/Down a couple of times. You may also press Control+PageDown a couple of times instead.
4. Try selecting text with SHIFT+Left, SHIFT+Right, SHIFT+Up, SHIFT+Down, SHIFT+Home and SHIFT+End.

Actual behavior:

Italian with Paul Noble.zip

NVDA's reporting of the selected/de-selected text is quite unreliable. Under most instances, it simply remains silent. It's worth mentioning that the only selection keystrokes which work consistently are Control+SHIFT+Left and Control+SHIFT+Right for word selection/de-selection. Setting Word's UI option to Always fixes the issue; however, it introduces glitches of its own.

Expected behavior:

NVDA should always read the selected/de-selected text, so remaining silent isn't an option!

NVDA logs, crash dumps and other attachments:

System configuration

NVDA installed/portable/running from source:

Installed

NVDA version:

Alpha 28569, and many recent alphas

Windows version:

Windows 11, Version 22H2 (OS Build 22621.1928)

Name and version of other software in use when reproducing the issue:

Microsoft Word 2021, V16.08

Other information about your system:

Other questions

Does the issue still occur after restarting your computer?

Yes

Have you tried any other versions of NVDA? If so, please report their behaviors.

I haven't tried the official 2022.1 release, but many recent alphas are affected.

If NVDA add-ons are disabled, is your problem still occurring?

Yes

Does the issue still occur after you run the COM Registration Fixing Tool in NVDA's tools menu?

Not done so

[Qchristensen]

Can you still replicate this with NVDA 2024.3 or 2024.4 beta Amir? I cannot replicate using:
Windows 11 (64-bit) Version: 23H2, Build: 22631.4249

Office 365 (64-bit) Version: 16.0.18025.20096

and NVDA 2024.4 Beta 5

[Dhana146]

When I tried ms word and tried to selected any text, paragraph, and sentences, it won't work for me. I checked nvda advance option but all are correct. My windows is 10 and i am using ms word 2016. Without restarting nvda it won't work. What might be the reason behind of it?

[amirsol81]

@Qchristensen I can still duplicate this with NVDA alpha-34198, Windows 11 24H2 (26100.1882), and MS Office 2021.

[Qchristensen]

I haven't been able to reproduce myself, so don't have any specific workaround in mind, except to try restarting NVDA with add-ons disabled (NVDA+q, then down arrow to "Restart with add-ons disabled" and press enter). If the issue is not present with add-ons disabled, then it is almost certainly one of your add-ons misbehaving (try enabling one at a time until the issue reappears to find the culprit). Otherwise if someone could share a log at debug level as they recreate the issue, we can see if there is more info in that:

First of all, your NVDA key is either INSERT or CAPS LOCK, depending on how you have NVDA setup. So, to set your log level:

1. Press NVDA+control+g to open the general settings
2. Press TAB until the focus is on 'Log level'
3. Press DOWN ARROW to get to 'Debug'
4. Press ENTER to close settings
5. Press NVDA+control+c to save settings.

To restart NVDA with add-ons disabled:

1. Press NVDA+Q
2. Down arrow to 'Restart with add-ons disabled'
3. Press ENTER

Next, recreate the issue - do whatever causes problems.

To get NVDA's log after that:

1. Press WINDOWS+R to open Windows' Run dialog
2. Type %temp% and press ENTER (that's the percent sign, the letter t e m p and another percent sign). Windows Explorer should open to the temporary folder.
3. Press TAB to move to the file list
4. Press N and move down to find up to three files: nvda.log (the log file for the current or most recent NVDA session), nvda-old.log (the log from the previous session) and nvda-crash.dmp (a crash dump with more information created if NVDA itself crashes).
5. Depending on what email program you use, the steps will be different, but attach as many of those three files to an email to [email protected] as will be useful, and if you could give this issue number - 15094, will help pull it up right away.

[Adriani90]

I can reproduce this with UIA disabled in MS Word, using Object model.

Probably Related to #17479.