Help! Apple Mail VoiceOver just swallowed my arms!

By Bruce Harrell, 31 January, 2025

Forum

macOS and Mac Apps

Hi everyone,

I don't know what happened. Yesterday, I was happily using Apple Mail. VoiceOver was functioning normally, reading line by line as I arrowed down through my in box, each arrow down causing VoiceOver to read information about the next listed email, specifically who the email was from and the subjecgt and the date and the first 4 lines of the email. If I wanted to read an email, all I had to do was hit enter, and VoiceOver would be available to rad the text of the email by pressing arrow down to read line by line.

Today, VoiceOver is not doing that. Instead, in my in box when I press arrow down it reads column and row numbers, and what's in the field, telling me the field is empty or giving me one little piece of the email item in my in box, such as from whom the email came but no other information unless I move vo-right arrow through the various columns. I can't go arrow down to move from email to email and hear all the information I could hear yesterday with the single key press. And when I open an email, VoiceOver tells me column headings when I try moving through the email to read it.

Please, if you think or know you have the answer, please tell me how do I restore voiceOver to reading all the information it was reading me yesterday with a simple arrow down in my in box? And how do I restore
VoiceOver to reading Apple Mail email message contents by using down arrow?

Help!

(head down on my desk, shoulders heaving, crying in frustration.

Thank you,

Bruce

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Comments

Navigate through the table…

Navigate through the table with native voiceover commands, it might work, also check out mouse tracking and keyboard focus settings just in case

Post a photo

If I had eyesight, I'd want you to post a photo.

This sounds a little like what would happen if you interact with the table that contains your message list. To stop interacting, VO+Shift+Up arrow.

I just tried it. I interacted with my message list. I experienced similar behavior, but I didn't get your column and row numbers. That might be due to some different setting in VO Utility.

And when I opened a message, things behaved normally. The problem I usually see here is that VoiceOver sometimes lands on the toolbar, and I need to navigate to the body. Then I can read it normally.

I would suggest opening the View menu and making sure all your settings are as you expect. Also, open Mail Settings, and in the toolbar, select Viewing. Then check your settings on that screen. Good luck. I hope you get your arms back.

11 years old but still relevant

Here is the highly revered AppleVis article on setting up and using Mac Maill. This was my Bible when I first started using Mac Mail. Consider changing some of your settings to match their recommendations. Maybe it will help.

Check VO verbosity settings

It has been a while now since I booted up my old MacBook Pro, but check VoiceOver's verbosity settings and look for a setting that allows you to disable the VoiceOver output for table headings and rows. I think if you turn this off, you will get back your old functionality.

HTH.

Tried disabling column…

Tried disabling column layout, it’s in the view menu, a short look through the article mentioned above suggest this as a possible issue

Slightly unrelated, but a…

Slightly unrelated, but a possible error? So if you look at the timestamps, at least on my end, it says the first comment I made was at 14 02. Yes, I used 24 hour time. Sue me. I'm 99.5% sure the thread didn't exist at 2pm, let alone my comment. Same goes for the other comments until the very last one, which says the proper time of 23 51. This is all in my time, by the way, so it might be different depending on your timezone. I'm in the UTC plus 3 timezone. I'm not sure if it's a cache error or something. Maybe a refresh will fix it. But that's kind of weird and not the first time I've seen date and time discrepancies on this website.

It was column layout!

Unchecking use column layout in the menu bar view pull down did the trick! Smile. Thaks to all for your immediate help. You have my heartfelt gratitude.

Joy!

Bruce

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