NVDA overly verbose when reading edit / combo boxes in ribbon (in Excel)

[Qchristensen]

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open Excel to a blank workbook
2. Press alt+h, f, s to move focus to the font size combo box.

Actual behavior:

When focus moves to the font size, NVDA reports:

Home grouping
Font grouping 2 of 9
Font Size combo box collapsed Change the size of your text. 2 of 11
Font Size edit Change the size of your text. Alt, H , F S selected 16

That is extremely verbose when all you want to know is that the font size (in this case) is 16pt.

This seems to affect Excel particularly. Checking in Word (with the same combo box which has the same keystroke to get to). NVDA reads:

Font Size edit Alt, H , F S selected 12

Which is at least a lot shorter.

Expected behavior:

NVDA should perhaps read something like:

16 Selected, font size combo box collapsed, Change the size of your text. Alt, H, F, S. 2 of 11, Font grouping 2 of 9, Home ribbon.

I think that is all the same information (I changed "home grouping" to "home ribbon", that's probably a separate issue) - it should report from the most specific item (tell you the font size) backwards (Do I even need to know I am on the home ribbon at this point - if I didn't pause after pressing alt+h long enough to hear that, I'm probably familiar enough with it to know where I am).

NVDA logs, crash dumps and other attachments:

System configuration

NVDA installed/portable/running from source:

NVDA version:

NVDA 2025.1 Beta 8 installed

Windows version:

Windows 11 (64-bit) Version: 24H2, Build: 26100.4061

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

Office 365 (64-bit) Version: 16.0.18827.20060

Other information about your system:

Other questions

Does the issue still occur after restarting your computer?

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

2024.4.2 which behaves the same.

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

No add-ons installed

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