I have been trying to use Word on iOS with VoiceOver for well over a year now. Since I have an Office subscription on my Windows PC, it would be nice to integrate my work flow across devices, OneDrive, etc.
I currently have an iPhone XR but have also experienced these issues with previous phones as well as with iOS 12 and iOS 13. So I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced similar issues and if so, if they have been successfully in getting around them.
Here is my current system:
- iOS 13.1
- Latest Word app
- VoiceOver
- Logitech bluetooth keyboard
Here are two serious issues I run into:
1. Voiceover does not speak text as it is being selected - The Shift+Option+ArrowKeys selects text. Although this text is properly selected, VoiceOver does not speak the text that is being selected. This makes it very difficult and error prone to perform edits. This keystroek does work in all other apps and edit fields as it should with VoiceOver announcing the selected text as it is being selected. This only appears to be a problem in the Word app.
2. Unable to open a second blank document and edit it after closing the first document opened - If I start the app and load the blank document template I am placed in an edit field into which I can edit text. Then, if I close the document and try to open a second blank document I cannot find any area into which text can be entered. Nor am I able to find any element on the screen or the ribbon for showing an edit field. In summary, I can edit one document, but can't edit a second new document unless I close the app and start over again.
These issues have persisted for well over a year and are very frustrating. I've reported them to MS several times with no result. If these things would work this would be a very nice app for editing documents on my phone while traveling and intgrating with other Office docs. yes, I could produce my documents with the Pages app and that works fine, but then one has to go through the translation process, create extra documents, etc.
Anyway, just wondering if other folks have tried using the MS Word app and are similarly frustrated or if they do or do not experience these issues or how they might get around them.
Thanks.
--Pete